THE CHILD'S BOOK OF 
AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 






^''^^^jS 








MARY STOYELL STIMPSON 

















4^ 





!^^ p-J 


























^<J,> ^^0-0 



IPV^ 




J" \ -:i^\* ^ 




The Child's Book 
of American Biography 





^^^ y-. 







<s 



He rode beside the coach on a chestnut horse. 
Frontispiece. See Pane 6. 



The Child's Book 

of 

American Biography 



BY 



MARY STOYELL STIMPSON 



ILLUSTRATED BY 

FRANK T. MERRILL 



^jon-referT 




aWVAD • OHS 



BOSTON 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 

1915 



,s ■ss 



Copyright, 1915, 
Bt Little, Bkown, and Company. 



All rights reserved 



Published, September, 1916 



Setup and electrotyped by J. S. Cuthing Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S-A. 
Presswork by S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, Mass., U. S.A. 



SEP 171915 

©CI.A410503 



FOKEWORD 

In every country there have been certain men 
and women whose busy lives have made the 
world better or wiser. The names of such are 
heard so often that every child should know a 
few facts about them. It is hoped the very 
short stories told here may make boys and girls 
eager to learn more about these famous people. 



CONTENTS 



PASB 



George Washington ^^-r-^ .... 1 

William Penn 9 

John Paul Jones 17 

John Singleton Copley 27 

Benjamin Franklin 36 

Louis Agassiz 46 

Dorothea Lynde Dix 54 

Ulysses Simpson Grant 62 

Clara Barton 75 

Abraham Lincoln 81 

Robert Edward Lee 91 

John James Audubon 98 

Robert Fulton 106 

George Peabody 116 

Daniel Webster 124 

Augustus St. Gaudens 132 

Henry David Thoreau 141 

Louisa May Alcott 149 

Samuel Finley Breese Morse . . .155 

William Hickling Prescott .... 164 

Phillips Brooks 173 



viii CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Samuel Clemens 181 

Joe Jefferson 188 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow . . . 197 

James McNeill Whistler .... 204 

Ralph Waldo Emerson 215 

Jane Addams 222 

Luther Burbank 229 

Edward Alexander MacDowell . . . 236 

Thomas Alva Edison 243 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



He rode beside the coach on a chestnut horse Frontispiece '^ 

PAGE 

He began munching one of these as he went back 

into the street 41''' 

"How big is your trunk?" 88 

He rode there on horseback 129 

The poor fellow fell to the floor as if he were dead 166 

He generally went out alone 221^ 



THE CHILD'S BOOK OF 
AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

GEORGE WASHINGTON 

No one ever tells a story about the early 
days in America without bringing in the 
name of George Washington. In fact he is 
called the Father of our country. But he 
did not get this name until he was nearly 
sixty years old; and all kinds of interesting 
things, like taming wild colts, fighting In- 
dians, hunting game, fording rivers, and 
commanding an army, had happened to him 
before that. He really had a wonderful life. 

George Washington was born in Virginia 
almost two hundred years ago. Virginia was 
not a state then. Indeed, there were no 
states. Every colony from Maine to Georgia 
was owned by King George, who sent men 
from England to govern them. 

At the time of George Washington's birth, 



2 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

Virginia was the richest of the thirteen colo- 
nies. George's father, Augustine Washing- 
ton, had a fine old southern farmhouse set 
in the midst of a large tobacco plantation. 
This farm of a thousand acres was on the 
Potomac River. The Washington boys 
(George had two older brothers and several 
younger ones) had plenty of room to play in, 
and George had a pony. Hero, of his own. 

George was eleven years old when his 
father died, and his mother managed the 
plantation and brought up the children. 
George never gave her any trouble. He had 
good lessons at school and was willing to help 
her at home. He was a fine wrestler and 
could row and swim. Indeed, he liked the 
water so well, that he fancied he might lead 
the Ufe of a sailor, carrying tobacco from the 
Potomac River to England. He heard stories 
of vessels meeting pirates and thought it 
would be very exciting. But his English 
uncle warned Mrs. Washington that it would 
be a hard life for her son, and she coaxed 
him to give up the idea. 

George had shown that he could do the 



GEORGE WASHINGTON 3 

work of a man on the farm when he was 
only sixteen. He was tall and strong and 
had a firm will. He had great skill in break- 
ing colts and miderstood planting and har- 
vesting, as well as tobacco raising. Being 
good at figures, he learned surveying. Sur- 
veying is the science of measuring land so 
that an owner will know just how much he 
has, how it lies, and what it adjoins, so that 
he can cut it into lots and set the meas- 
urements all down on paper. George was a 
fine land surveyor, and when he went to 
visit a half-brother, Lawrence Washington, 
who had a beautiful new home on the Poto- 
mac, which he called Mount Vernon, an Eng- 
lish nobleman. Lord Fairfax, who owned the 
next estate, hired George to go all over his 
land in Virginia and put on paper for him 
the names of the people who lived in the 
Shenandoah valley, the way the roads ran, 
and the size of his different plantations. He 
really did not know how much land he 
owned, for King Charles the Second had 
given an immense amount of land to his 
grandfather. But he thought it was quite 



4 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

time to find out, and he was sure George 
Washington was an honest lad who would do 
the work well. 

Lord Fairfax spoke so highly of George 
that he was made surveyor of the colony. 
The outdoor life, and the long tramps in the 
sunshine made George's tall frame fill out, 
and he became one of the stoutest and hand- 
somest young men in the colony. 

Lawrence Washington was ill and had to 
go to a warmer climate, so he took George with 
him for help and company. Lawrence did 
not live and left the eight-thousand-acre 
estate. Mount Vernon, to George. This made 
George Washington a rich man at twenty. 

The French and English began to discover 
that there was fine, rich land on either side of 
the Ohio River, and each laid claim to it. 
Now the Indians had been wandering through 
the forests of that region, camping and fishing 
where they chose, and they felt the land be- 
longed to them. They grew ugly and sulky 
toward the English with whom up to this 
time they had been very friendly. It looked 
as if there would be war. 



GEORGE WASHINGTON 5 

''Some one must go and talk to these 
Frenchmen," said Dinwiddle, the English 
governor at Virginia, ''whom shall we send?" 

Lord Fairfax, the old neighbor of George, 
answered: "I know just the man you want. 
Your messenger must be young, strong, and 
brave. He must know the country and be 
able to influence both the French and the 
Indians. Send George Washington." 

Washington served through these troubled 
times one year with Dinwiddle and three years 
with General Braddock, an English general. 
Always he proved himself brave. He had 
plenty of dangers. He was nearly drowned, 
four bullets went crashing through his clothes, 
in two different battles the horse on which 
he was riding was killed, but he kept calm 
and kept on fighting. He was soon made 
commander-in-chief of all the armies in Vir- 
ginia. 

After five hard years of fighting, Washing- 
ton went back to Mount Vernon, where he 
lived quietly and happily with a beautiful 
widow to whom he was married a few weeks 
after meeting her. When he and his bride 



6 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

rode home to Mount Vernon, she was dressed 
in white satin and wore pearl jewels. Her 
coach was drawn by six white horses. Wash- 
ington was dressed in a suit of blue, lined with 
red satin and trimmed with silver lace. He 
rode beside the coach on a chestnut horse, 
with soldiers attending him. 

Mrs. Washington had two children, Jack 
Custis, aged six, and Martha, who was nick- 
named Patty, aged four. George Washington 
was very fond of these children, and one of 
the first things he did after they came to 
Mount Vernon was to send to England for 
ten shillings' worth of toys, six little books, 
and a fashionable doll. Patty broke this 
doll, but Washington only laughed and or- 
dered another that was better and larger. 

George Washington was having a fine time 
farming, raising horses and sheep, having 
the negro women weave and spin cloth and 
yarn, carrying on a fishery, and riding over 
his vast estate, when there was trouble be- 
tween the colonists and England. Again a 
man was needed that was brave, wise, and 
honest. And when the colonists decided to 



GEORGE WASHINGTON 7 

fight unless the king would either stop taxing 
them or let them vote in Parliament, they 
said: ''George Washington must be our 
commander-in-chief." So he left his wife, 
children, and home, and led the American 
troops for seven years. 

The colonists won their freedom from the 
English yoke, but they knew if they were to 
govern themselves, they needed a very wise 
man at their head. They made George 
Washington the first President of the United 
States of America. Of course it pleased him 
that such honor should be shown him, but he 
would have preferred to be just a Virginian 
farmer at Mount Vernon. However, he went 
to New York and took the oath of ojffice — 
that is he promised, as all presidents have to, 
to work for the good of the United States. 
He was dressed in a suit of dark brown cloth 
(which was made in America) with knee- 
breeches and white silk stockings, and shoes 
with large silver buckles. He wore a sword at 
his side, and as the sun shone on his powdered 
hair, he looked very noble and handsome. 
He kissed the Bible as he took the oath ; the 



8 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

chancellor lifted his hand and shouted : 
"Long live George Washington, President 
of the United States." 

The people did some wild cheering, cannons 
boomed, bells rang, hats were tossed in the 
air, and there was happiness everywhere. 

America had her first President ! 

Washington ruled the people for eight 
years wisely and well. He was greatly be- 
loved at home and he was praised in other 
countries. A German ruler said Washington 
was the greatest general in the world. A 
prime minister of England said Washington 
was the purest man in history. But we like 
to say Washington was the Father of our 
country, and we like to remember that he 
said: "Do justice to all, but never forget 
that we are Americans ! " 



WILLIAM PENN 

When Charles the Second was King of 
England, there lived in London a wealthy- 
admiral of the British navy, Sir William Penn. 
He had been such a brave sailor that he was 
a favorite at court. He had a son who was a 
handsome, merry lad, whom he meant to 
educate very highly, for he knew the king 
would find some great place for him in his 
kingdom. 

So young William was sent early to school 
and college, where he learned Greek and 
Latin, French, German, and Dutch. He was 
quick motioned and strong. At Oxford Col- 
lege there was hardly a student who could 
equal him in swimming, rowing, and out- 
door sports. His father grew prouder and 
prouder of his son each day. ''William,'' 
he said to himself, ''will do honor to me, to 
his king, and to his country." And he kept 
urging money and luxuries upon his son, 
whom he dressed like a prince. 

9 



10 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

Imagine the AdmiraFs despair when he 
learned one morning that his son was hob- 
nobbing with the Quakers ! Just then a new 
sect of rehgious people who called them- 
selves Quakers, or Friends, had sprung up in 
England. They were much despised. A 
Quaker believed that all men are equal, so 
he never took his hat off to any one, not even 
the king. The Quakers would not take an 
oath in court; would not go to war or pay 
money in support of war ; always said ''thee" 
and "thou" in addressing each other, and 
wore plain clothes and sober colors. They 
thought they ought always to act as their 
consciences told them to. 

In England and Massachusetts, Quakers 
were treated like criminals. Some of them 
were put to death. But the more they were 
abused, the more their faith became known, 
and the more followers they had. 

A traveling Quaker preacher went to Ox- 
ford, and when young William Penn heard 
him, he decided that he had found a religion 
that suited him. He stopped going to col- 
lege services, declared he would not wear the 



WILLIAM PENN 11 

college gown, and even tore the gowns from 
other students. He was expelled from Oxford. 

The Admiral was very angry. He told his 
son he had disgraced him. But he knew 
William had a strong will, and instead of hav- 
ing many harsh words with him, sent his son 
off to Paris. ''I flatter myself," laughed the 
Admiral, 'Hhat in gay, fashionable Paris, 
William will soon forget his foolish ideas 
about the Quakers." 

The young people of Paris made friends 
with William at once, for he was handsome 
and jolly. He was eighteen years old. He 
had large eyes and long dark hair which fell 
in curls about his shoulders. For a time he 
entered into all the gay doings of Paris and 
spent a long time in Italy. So when he re- 
turned to England, two years later, his father 
nodded approval at the change in his looks 
and ways. He seemed to have forgotten the 
new religion entirely. But presently an aw- 
ful plague swept over London, and William 
grew serious again. The Admiral now packed 
the boy off to Ireland. He was bound to stop 
this Quaker business. 



12 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

There was some kind of a riot or war in 
Ireland, and William fought in the thickest 
of it, for he liked to be in the midst of what- 
ever was going on. One evening he heard 
that the old Quaker preacher he had liked 
at Oxford was preaching near by. He, with 
some other soldiers, went to hear him, and all 
his love for the Quaker faith came back to 
him, and he joined the society. He was 
imprisoned with other Quakers, and then his 
father said he would never speak to him 
again. But he really loved his son and was 
so pleased when he got out of prison that he 
agreed to forgive him, if he would only promise 
to take off his hat when he met his father, 
the king, or the Duke of York. But after 
young William had thought about it, he told 
his father that he could not make such a 
promise. 

William was sometimes in prison, some- 
times driven from home by his father, then 
forgiven for the sake of his mother ; often he 
was tired out with writing and preaching, but 
he kept true to his belief. 

When William's father died, he left his 



WILLIAM PENN 13 

son great wealth, which he used for the good 
of others, especially the Quakers. William 
knew the Crown owed the Admiral nearly a 
, hundred thousand dollars. As the king was 
something of a spendthrift, it was not likely 
that the debt would be paid very soon, so 
William asked the king to pay him in land. 
This the monarch was glad to do, so he granted 
an immense tract of land on the Dela- 
ware River, in America, to the Admiral's 
son. 

William planned to call this tract Sylvania, 
or Woodland, but when King Charles heard 
this, he said: "One thing I insist on. Your 
grant must be called after your father, fori 
had great love for the brave Admiral." Thus 
the name decided on was Pennsylvania 
(Penn's Woods). 

William Penn lost no time in sending word 
to all the Quakers in England that in America 
they could find a home and on his land be free 
from persecution. As many as three thousand 
of them sailed at once for America, and the 
next year William visited his new possessions. 
He did not know just how the tract might 



14 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

please him, so he left his wife and child be- 
hind, in England. He laid out a city himself 
on the Delaware River and called it the City 
of Brotherly Love, because he hoped there 
would be much love and harmony in the 
colony of Quakers. The other name for 
city of brotherly love is Philadelphia. If 
you visit this city to-day, you will find many 
of its streets bearing the names William 
Penn gave them more than two hun- 
dred years ago. Some of these are Pine, 
Mulberry, Cedar, Walnut, and Chestnut 
streets. 

Of course Indians were to be found along 
all the rivers in the American colonies. 
Penn really owned the land along the Dela- 
ware, but he thought it better to pay them 
for it as they had held it so many years, so 
he called a council under a big tree, where he 
shook hands with the red men and said he 
was of the same blood and flesh as they ; and 
he gave them knives, beads, kettles, axes, 
and various things for their land. The In- 
dians were pleased and vowed they would 
live in love with William Penn as long as the 



WILLIAM PENN 16 

moon and sun should shine. This treaty 
was never broken. And one of the finest 
things to remember about WiUiam Penn is 
his honesty with the much persecuted In- 
dians. 

Penn left the Quaker colony after a while 
and went back to England. But he returned 
many years later with his wife and daughter. 
He had two fine homes, one in the city of 
Philadelphia, the other in the country. At 
the country home there was a large dining- 
hall, and in it Penn entertained strangers 
and people of every color and race. At one 
of his generous feasts his guests ate one hun- 
dred roast turkeys. 

Penn, who was so gentle and loving to all 
the world, had many troubles of his own. 
One son was wild and gave him much anx- 
iety. He himself was suspected of being too 
friendly with the papist King James, and of 
refusing to pay his bills. For one thing and 
another, he was cast into prison until he lost 
his health from the cold, dark cells. It seems 
strange that the rich, honest William Penn 
should from boyhood be doomed to imprison- 



16 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

merit because of his religion, his loyalty, and 
from trying to obey the voice of his con- 
science. While he was not born in this coun- 
try, the piety and honesty of William Penn 
will always be remembered in America. 



JOHN PAUL JONES 

Along the banks of the River Dee, in 
Scotland, the Earls of Selkirk owned two 
castles. John Paul was landscape gardener 
at Saint Mary's Isle, and his brother George 
made the grounds beautiful at the Arbigland 
estate. Little John Paul stayed often with 
his uncle. At either place he could see the 
blue water, and he loved everything about 
it. At Arbigland he watched the ships sail 
by and could see the English mountains in 
the distance. From the sailors he heard all 
kinds of sea stories and tales of wild border 
warfare. When a tiny child, he used to wan- 
der down to the mouth of the river Nith and 
coax the crews of the sailing vessels to tell 
him stories. They liked him and taught him 
to manage small sailboats. He quickly 
learned sea phrases and used to climb on 
some high rock and give off orders to his small 
play-fellows, or perhaps launch his boat 

17 



18 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

alone upon the waters and just make believe 
that he had a crew of men on board with 
whom he was very stern. 

For a few years this son of the Scotch gar- 
dener went to parish school, but his mind was 
filled with the wild stories of adventure, and 
he longed to see the world. John had a feel- 
ing that his life was going to be exciting, and 
he could not keep his mind on his books some 
days. He was not sorry when his mother 
told him that as times were hard, he must 
leave school and go to work. 

John's older brother, William, had gone to 
America, and his uncle George had ceased 
working for the Earls of Selkirk because he 
had saved enough money to go to America. 
He was a merchant, with a store of his own 
in South Carolina. 

John heard such glowing accounts of men 
getting rich and famous in that land across 
the sea that he felt it must be almost like 
fairy-land. Think how pleased he must have 
been when at the age of twelve he shipped 
aboard the ship Friendship, bound for Vir- 
ginia! And best of all, this ship anchored 



JOHN PAUL JONES 19 

a few miles from Fredericksburg, where his 
brother lived. When in port, John stayed 
with William. He loved America from the 
first moment he saw a bit of her coast, and 
he never left off loving our country as long as 
he lived. 

John went back and forth from America to 
Scotland on the Friendship a great many 
times. He had made up his mind that he 
would always go to sea, and he meant to 
understand everything about ships, countries 
to which they might sail, and all laws about 
trading in different ports. So he studied all 
the books he could get hold of that would 
teach him these things. 

Sometimes he changed vessels, shipping 
with a different captain. Sometimes he went 
to strange countries. But he was one who 
kept his eyes open, and he learned to be more 
and more skilful in all sea matters. 

About two years before the Revolutionary 
War, he was feeling discouraged. He knew 
his employers were pirates in a way. He 
had met with some trouble on his last voyage, 
so that he knew it was best not to go to his 



20 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

brother's when he reached North Carolina 
from the West Indies, and that he had best 
avoid using his own name. As he sat alone 
on a bench in front of a tavern one afternoon, 
his head in his hands, a jovial, handsome 
man came along. The man was well dressed, 
a kind-hearted, rich Southerner. He hated 
to see people unhappy. After he had passed 
John Paul, he turned back and going close to 
him, asked : " What's your name, my friend ? " 

''I have none," was the answer. 

''Where's your home?" 

**1 have none." 

The stranger was struck with the face and 
figure of John Paul and noticed that his hand- 
some black eyes had a commanding expres- 
sion. He said to himself : ''Here is a lad that 
will be of importance some day, or my name 
is not Willie Jones !" 

Then Willie Jones took John by the arm 
and said : "Come home with me. My home 
is big enough for us both." 

This was quite true, for Willie Jones had a 
beautiful estate called "The Grove." The 
house was like a palace with its immense 



JOHN PAUL JONES 21 

drawing-rooms, wide fireplaces, carved halls, 
and spacious dining-room which overlooked 
the owner's race track. For Willie Jones 
owned blooded horses, went to country hunts, 
played cards, and had overseers to manage 
his fifteen hundred slaves, who worked in 
Jones's tobacco fields and salt mines. His 
clothes were of the first quality and his linen 
fine. 

On a neighboring estate across the river 
lived Willie's brother, Allen Jones. He was 
married to a dark-eyed beauty who gave 
parties in her large ballroom, and who led the 
minuets and gavottes better than any of her 
guests. 

Just as John Paul had been at home on the 
estates of the Earl of Selkirk in Scotland, he 
was now at home on both these southern 
plantations. By both families he was petted 
and soon beloved. He seemed like one of 
their own blood. 

The people of North Carolina talked con- 
stantly of Liberty. They declared them- 
selves anxious to be independent of England. 
Soon after the famous Boston Tea-party, 



22 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

the women of North Carolina pledged their 
word to drink no more tea that was taxed. 

John Paul took the same stand as his good 
friends. And he more than ever felt he was 
born to do great deeds. And he hoped to 
prove his gratitude to the Joneses by winning 
fame. From this time he took the name of 
John Paul Jones. All his navy papers are 
signed that way. And he became an Amer- 
ican citizen. 

Paul Jones's rise was rapid. In 1776 he 
became a lieutenant in the Continental navy. 
The colonists had but five armed vessels; 
the Alfred, on which Paul Jones served, was 
one of them. These five ships were the be- 
ginning of the American navy. The captain 
of the Alfred was slow in reaching his vessel, 
and so Paul Jones had to get the ship ready 
for sea. He was so quick and sure in all his 
acts that the sailors all liked him. 

The ship was visited by the commodore 
of the squadron of five ships. He found 
everything in such fine condition that he said : 
"My confidence in you is so great that if 
the captain does not reach here by the time 



JOHN PAUL JONES 23 

we should get away, I shall hoist my flag on 
your ship and give you command of her ! '^ 

"Thank you, Commodore," and Paul 
bowed, "when your flag is hoisted on the 
Alfred, I hope a flag of the United Colonies 
will fly at the peak. I want to be the man to 
raise that flag on the ocean." 

The commodore laughed and replied: "As 
Congress is slow, I am afraid there will not 
be time to make a flag after it actually de- 
cides what that shall be." 

"I think there will, Sir," answered Paul 
Jones. 

It seems he knew almost for a certainty 
that the Continental Congress had planned 
their first flag of the Revolution. It was to 
be of yellow silk, showing a pine tree with a 
rattlesnake under it, and bearing the daring 
motto: "Don't tread on me." Paul Jones 
had bought the material to make one, out of 
his own pocket, and Bill Green, a quarter- 
master, sat up all night to cut and sew the 
cloth into a flag. 

Captain Saltonstall arrived in time to take 
command; but Paul Jones kept his disappoint- 



24 CHILD S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

ment to himself and faithfully did the lieuten- 
ant's duties. He had been drilling the men, 
and when the commodore came again to in- 
spect the ship, some four hundred, with one 
hundred marines, were drawn up on deck. 
Bill Green and Paul Jones were very busy 
for a minute, and just as the commodore came 
over the ladder at the ship's side, the flag 
with the pennant flew up the staff, under 
Paul Jones's hand. Every man's hat came 
off, the drummer boys beat a double ruffle 
on the drums, and such cheers burst from 
every throat ! 

The commodore said to Paul Jones: "I 
congratulate you ; you have been enterpris- 
ing. Congress adopted that flag but yester- 
day, and this one is the first to fly." 

Bill Green was thanked, too, and the 
squadron sailed for the open sea, the Alfred 
leading the way. 

Paul Jones was very daring, but his judg- 
ment and knowledge were so perfect that in 
the twenty-three great battles which he 
fought upon the seas, though many times 
wounded, he was never defeated. He made 



JOHN PAUL JONES 25 

the American flag, which he was the first to 
raise, honored, and he kept it flying in the 
Texel with a dozen, double-decked Dutch 
frigates threatening him in the harbor, while 
another dozen English ships were waiting 
just beyond to capture him. He was offered 
safety if he would hoist the French colors 
and accept a commission in the French navy, 
but he never wavered. It was his pride to be 
able to say to the American Congress: "I 
have never borne arms under any but the 
American flag, nor have I ever borne or acted 
under any commission except that of the 
Congress of America." 

Paul Jones served without pay and used 
nearly all of his private fortune for the cause 
of independence. Congress made him the 
ranking officer of the American navy and gave 
him a gold medal. France conferred the 
cross of a military order upon him and a gold 
sword. It was a beautiful day when this 
cross was given him. The French minister 
gave a grand fete in Philadelphia. All 
Congress was there, army and navy officers, 
citizens, and sailors who had served under 



26 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

Jones. Against the green of the trees, the 
uniforms of the officers and the white gowns of 
the ladies showed gleamingly. 

Paul Jones wore the full uniform of an 
American captain and his gold sword. He 
carried his blue and gold cap in his hand. A 
military band played inspiring airs as the 
French minister and Paul Jones walked 
toward the center of the lawn. Paul Jones was 
pale but happy. He was receiving an honor 
never before given a man who was not a citi- 
zen of France, but as his eyes lighted on the 
stars and stripes floating above him, they 
filled with tears, for his greatest joy of all 
was that he had left the sands of Dee to be- 
come a citizen and defender of his beloved 
America. 



JOHN SINGLETON COPLEY 

When the city of Boston, Massachusetts, 
was just a small town in which there were 
no schools where boys and girls could learn 
to draw and paint, one little fellow by the 
name of John Singleton Copley was quite 
sure to be waiting at the door when his 
stepfather, Peter Pelham, came home to 
dinner or supper, to ask why the pictures he 
had been drawing of various people did not 
look like them. Peter Pelham could nearly 
always tell John what the matter was, because 
he knew a good deal about drawing. He 
made maps and engravings himself. 

John remembered what his stepfather told 
him and practised until he made really fine 
drawings. Then he began to color them. He 
did love gay tints, and as both men and 
women wore many buckles and jewels, and 
brocades and velvets of every hue in those 
days, he could make these portraits as dazzling 
as he chose. 

27 



28 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

There is no doubt John loved to make 
pictures. He had drawn many a one on the 
walls of his nursery when he was scarcely 
more than a baby. He later covered the blank 
pages and margins of his school-books with 
faces and animals. And instead of playing 
games with the other boys in holidays, he was 
apt to spend such hours with chalks and paints. 

When John was fourteen or fifteen, his 
portraits were thought so lifelike that Boston 
people paid him good prices for them. He 
was glad to earn money, for his kind step- 
father died, leaving his wife to the care of 
John and his stepbrother, Henry. He had 
been working and saving for years when he 
married the daughter of a rich Boston mer- 
chant. This wife, Suzanne, was a beautiful 
girl, proud of her husband's talent and anxious 
for him to get on in the world. The artist 
soon bought a house on Beacon Hill which 
had a fine view from its windows. He called 
this estate, which covered eleven acres, his 
"little farm." You can guess how large it 
looked when I tell you that the farm is to-day 
practically the western side of Beacon Hill. 



JOHN SINGLETON COPLEY 29 

The young couple were happy and must 
have prospered, for a man who saw the house 
on the hill wrote to his friends : "I called on 
John Singleton Copley and found him living 
in a beautiful home on a fine open common ; 
dressed in red velvet, laced with gold, and 
having everything about him in handsome 
style." It is evident John still liked bright 
colors. 

John had never seen any really good paint- 
ings; he had never had any teacher; and 
he longed to see the works of the old masters 
in other countries. But at first he did not 
want to leave his old mother; then it was 
the young wife who kept him here ; and by 
and by he felt he could not be away from 
his own dear little children, so it was not 
until he was nearly forty that he went abroad. 

In one of the first letters that Suzanne got 
from her husband he told of the fine shops in 
Genoa. She laughed when she read that in 
a few hours after he landed he bought a suit 
of black velvet lined with crimson satin, lace 
ruffles for his neck and sleeves, and silk stock- 
ings. ''I'd know," she said to herself, "the 



30 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

suit would have a touch of crimson — John 
does love rich colors ! " 

All his letters told how wonderful he found 
the old paintings and often described his 
attempts to copy them. After he had visited 
the galleries and museums of Italy, he went 
to England. He was delighted to find that his 
wife and family had already fled there because 
of the Revolution in America. He had heard 
of the trouble between the Colonists in 
America and England and had worried night 
and day for fear harm would come to Suzanne 
and the children. Of course he worried about 
the "little farm" too, but it was no time to 
go back to Boston, and he could only hope his 
agent would protect it. 

The Copleys liked London, but some days 
they felt homesick for Beacon Hill. Still 
he must keep earning money, and there were 
plenty of English people who wanted to sit 
for their portraits, while of course, with the 
fierce Revolution raging, and with soldiers 
camping everywhere, Boston people did 
not care much about having their pictures 
painted. 



JOHN SINGLETON COPLEY 31 

In London John began to paint pictures 
that showed events in history. Sometimes 
he would take for a subject a famous battle, 
sometimes a scene from the English Parlia- 
ment, or perhaps a king or lord doing some 
act which we have read about in their lives. 
These pictures were immense in size and took 
a long time to do, because Copley was par- 
ticular to have everything exactly true. 
George the Third was so much pleased with 
his work that when he was going to paint the 
large work ''The Siege of Gibraltar", his 
Majesty sent him, with his wife and eldest 
daughter, to Hanover, to take the portraits 
of four great generals of that country, who 
had proved their bravery and skill on the rock 
of Gibraltar. All the uniforms, swords, 
banners, and scenery were as perfect as if 
Copley had been at the siege himself, and the 
officers' faces were just like photographs. 
The king was very kind and generous. He 
told Copley not to hurry back to England but 
to enjoy Hanover thoroughly, and to give his 
wife and daughter a holiday they would never 
forget. To enable Copley to go into private 



32 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

homes and look at art treasures which the 
public never saw, the king gave him a letter 
asking this courtesy, written with his own 
hand. 

This large canvas, ''The Siege of Gibraltar", 
is owned by the city of London. There is 
another huge painting, ''The Death of Lord 
Chatham", at Kensington Museum, which 
Americans like to see. It shows old Lord 
Chatham falling in a faint at the House 
of Lords. The poor man was too sick to be 
there, but he was a strong friend to the Ameri- 
can Colonies and had declared over and over 
again that the king ought not to tax them. 
When he heard there was to be voting on the 
question, he rose from his bed and drove in 
a carriage to the House to say once more how 
wicked it was. The members of the House 
of Lords look very imposing with their grave 
faces and robes of scarlet, trimmed with 
ermine, but they sometimes act in a childish 
manner and show temper. One man who 
almost hated Chatham for so defending the 
Colonies sat as still as if he were carved 
out of stone when the poor old lord dropped 



JOHN SINGLETON COPLEY 33 

to the floor. This picture shows him sitting 
as cold and stiff as a ramrod while all the 
other members have sprung to their feet or 
have rushed to help the fainting man. 

The Boston Public Library holds one of 
Copley's historical pictures. It shows a scene 
from the life of Charles the First of England. 
He is standing in the speaker's chair in the 
House of Commons, demanding something 
which the speaker, kneeling before him, is 
unwilling to tell. There is plenty of chance 
for John Copley to show his love for brilliant 
coloring, for the suits of the king, his nephew, 
Prince Rupert, and his followers are of velvets 
and satins, the slashed sleeves showing facings 
of yellow, cherry, and green. The knee 
breeches are fastened with buckles over gaudy 
silk stockings and high-heeled slippers. The 
men wear deep collars of lace, curled wigs, 
and velvet hats with sweeping plumes. 

But in a picture at Buckingham Palace 
called "The Three Princesses" there is a 
riot of color. The scene is a garden, beyond 
which the towers of Windsor Castle show, 
with the flag of England floating above it; 



34 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

there are fruit-trees and flowers, parrots of 
gay plumage, and pet dogs. The little girls' 
gowns are rainbow-like, and one of them is 
dancing to the music of a tambourine. It is 
a darling picture, and the royal couple prized 
it greatly. 

When John Copley was only a young man, 
he sent a picture from Boston to England, 
asking that it might be placed on exhibition 
at the Royal Academy. It was called ''The 
Boy and the Flying Squirrel." The boy 
was a portrait of his half-brother, Henry 
Pelham. Copley sent no name or letter, 
and it was against the rules of the Academy to 
hang any picture by an unknown artist, but 
the coloring w^as so beautiful that the rule 
was broken, and crowds stopped before the 
Boston lad's canvas to admire it. When it 
was discovered that John Copley painted it, 
and it was known he had received no lessons 
at that time, he was urged to go abroad at 
once. At the time he could not. But the 
praise encouraged him to keep on, and before 
he had a chance to visit Italy, he had painted 
nearly three hundred pictures. Nearly all 



JOHN SINGLETON COPLEY 35 

of these were painted at the "little farm" 
on Beacon Hill, when he or Suzanne would 
hardly have dreamed the day would come 
when he should be the favorite of kings and 
courts. 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 

One of the greatest Americans that ever 
lived was Benjamin Frankhn. The story of 
his Ufe sounds Uke a fairy tale. Though he 
stood before queens and kings, dressed in 
velvet and laces, before he died, he was the 
son of a poor couple who had to work very 
hard to find food and clothes for their large 
family — for there were more than a dozen 
little Franklins ! 

Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston, 
one bright Sunday morning more than two 
hundred years ago. That same afternoon his 
father took the baby boy across the street 
to the Old South Church, to be baptized. 
He was named for his uncle Benjamin, who 
lived in England. 

As Benjamin grew up, he made friends 
easily. People liked his eager face and merry 
ways. He was never quiet but darted about 
like a kitten. The questions he asked — 

36 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 37 

and the mischief he got into ! But the 
neighbors loved him. The women made Httle 
cakes for him, and the men were apt to toss 
him pennies. 

One day when Benjamin was about seven, 
some one gave him all the pennies he could 
squeeze into one hand. Off he ran to the toy 
shop, but on his way he overtook a boy blow- 
ing a whistle. Ben thought that whistle was 
the nicest thing he had ever seen and offered 
his handful of pennies for it. The boy took 
them, and Ben rushed home with his prize. 
Well, he tooted that whistle all over the house 
until the family wished there had never been 
a whistle in the world. Then an older brother 
told him he had paid the other boy altogether 
too much for it, and when Ben found that if 
he had waited and bought it at a store, he 
would have had some of the pennies left for 
something else, he burst out crying. He did 
not forget about this, either. When he was 
a grown man and was going to buy something, 
he would wait a little and say to himself: 
"Careful, now — don't pay too much for 
your whistle!" An Italian sculptor who 



38 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

had heard this story made a lovely statue 
called '' Franklin and his Whistle." If you 
happen to be in the beautiful Public Library in 
Newark, New Jersey, you must ask to see it. 

Ben always loved the water and was a 
wonderful swimmer as a little fellow. He 
could manage a boat, too, and spent half his 
play hours down at the wharves. One day 
he had been flying kites, as he often did, and 
thought he would see what would happen if 
he went in swimming with a kite tied to his 
waist. He tried it and the kite pulled him 
along finely. If he wanted to go slowly, 
he let out a little bit of string. If he wanted 
to move through the water fast, he sent the 
kite up higher in the air. 

But it was in school that Ben did his best. 
He studied so well that his father wanted to 
make a great scholar of him, but there was 
not money enough to do this, so when he was 
ten he had to go into his father's soap and 
candle shop to work. The more he worked 
over the candles, the worse he hated to, and 
by and by he said to his father : "Oh, let me 
go to sea!" 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 39 

"No," said Mr. Franklin, ''your brother 
ran away to sea. I can't lose another boy 
that way. We will look up something else." 

So the father and son went round the city, 
day after day, visiting all kinds of work-shops 
to see what Benjamin fancied best. But 
when it proved that the trade of making 
knives and tools, which was what pleased 
Benjamin most, could not be learned until 
Mr. Franklin had paid one hundred dollars, 
that had to be given up, like the school. 
There was never any spare cash in the Franklin 
purse. 

As James Franklin, an older brother, had 
learned the printing business in England and 
had set up an office in Boston, Ben was put 
with him to learn the printer's trade. Poor 
Ben found him a hard man to work for. If 
it had not been for the books he found there 
to read and the friends who loaned him still 
more books, he could not have stayed six 
months. But Ben knew that since he had to 
leave school when he was only ten, the thing 
for him to do was to study by himself every 
minute he could get. He sat up half the nights 



40 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

studying. When he needed time to finish 
some book, he would eat fruit and drink a 
glass of water at noon, just to save a few extra 
minutes for studying. James never gave 
him a chance for anything but work ; it seemed 
as if he could not pile enough on him. When 
he found Ben could write poetry pretty well, 
he made him write ballads and sell them on 
the streets, putting the money they brought 
into his own pocket. He was very mean to 
the younger brother, and when he began to 
strike Ben whenever he got into a rage, the 
boy left him. 

Benjamin went to New York but found no 
work there. He worked his way to Phila- 
delphia. By this time his clothes were ragged. 
He had no suitcase or traveling bag and 
carried his extra stockings and shirts in his 
pockets. You can imagine how bulgy and 
slack he looked walking through the streets! 
He was hungry and stepped into a baker's 
for bread. He had only one silver dollar in 
the world. But he must eat, whether he found 
work or not. When he asked for ten cents' 
worth of bread, the baker gave him three 




He began munching one of these as he went back 
into the street. Page 41. 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 41 

large loaves. He began munching one of 
these as he went back into the street. As 
his pockets were filled with stockings and 
shirts, he had to carry the other two loaves 
under his arms. No wonder a girl standing 
in a doorway giggled as he passed by! 
Years afterwards, when Franklin was rich 
and famous, and had married this very girl, 
the two used to laugh well over the way he 
looked the first time she saw him. 

After one or two useless trips to England, 
Franklin settled down to the printing business 
in Philadelphia. He was the busiest man in 
town. Deborah, his wife, helped him, and 
he started a newspaper, a magazine, a book- 
store ; he made ink, he made paper, even made 
soap (work that he hated so when a boy!). 
Then he published every year an almanac. 
Into this odd book, which people hurried to 
buy, he put some wise sayings, which I am 
sure you must have heard many times. Such 
as: ''Haste makes waste"; ''Well done is 
better than well said"; and "Early to bed 
and early to rise, makes a man healthy, 
wealthy, and wise." 



42 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

Franklin and his wife did so many things 
and did them well that they grew rich. So 
when he was only forty-two, Franklin shut 
up all his shops and took his time for studying 
out inventions. When you hear about the 
different things he invented, you will not 
wonder that the colleges in the country 
thought he ought to be honored with a degree 
and made him Doctor Franklin. Here are 
some of his inventions : lightning-rods, stoves, 
fans to cool hot rooms, a cure for smoking 
chimneys, better printing-presses, sidewalks, 
street cleaning. He opened salt mines and 
drained swamps so that they were made into 
good land. Then he founded the first pub- 
lic library, the first police service, and the 
first fire company. Doesn't it seem as if he 
thought of everything? 

But better than all, Franklin always worked 
for the glory of America. When King George 
was angry and bitter against our colonies, 
Franklin went to England and stood his 
ground against the king and all his council. 
He said the king had no right to make the 
colonies pay a lot of money for everything 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 43 

that was brought over from England unless 
they had some say as to how much money it 
should be. If they paid taxes, they wanted 
to vote. They were not willing to be just 
slaves under a hard master. 

"Very well, then," said the council, ''then 
you colonists can't have any more clothes from 
England." 

Mr. Franklin answered back: ''Very well^ 
then, we will wear old clothes till we can 
make our own new ones !" 

In a week or so word was sent from England 
that clothing would not be taxed; and the 
colonists had great rejoicings. They built 
bonfires, rang bells, and had processions; 
and Benjamin Franklin's name was loudly 
cheered. 

But England still needed money and de- 
cided to make the colonists pay a tax on tea 
and a few other things. Then the American 
colonists were as angry as they could be. 
They tipped the whole cargo of tea into Boston 
Harbor, and in spite of Franklin's trying to 
make the king and the colonists understand 
each other, there was a long war (it is called 



44 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

the Revolutionary War) and it ended in the 
colonists declaring themselves independent of 
Great Britain. A paper telling the king and 
the world that the colonists should not obey 
the English rule any longer, but would make 
laws of their o^ti was signed by men from 
all thirteen colonies. Benjamin Franklin was 
one of the men from Pennsylvania who signed 
it. As this paper — The Declaration of In- 
dependence — was first proclaimed July 
4, 1776, the people always celebrate the 
fourth day of July throughout the United 
States. 

Franklin was postmaster-general of the 
colonies ; he was our first minister to the Court 
of France, the governor (or president, as the 
office was then called) of Pennsylvania, 
and helped, more than almost any other 
man, to make America the great country 
she is. 

Franklin was admired in France and Eng- 
land for his good judgment and clever ideas. 
Pictures of him were shown in public places ; 
prints of his face were for sale in three coun- 
tries; medallions of his head were set in 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 45 

rings and snuff-boxes; he traveled in royal 
coaches, and was treated like a prince. But 
although it was ''the Great Doctor Franklin" 
here, and "the Noble Patriot" there, he did 
not grow vain. Benjamin Franklin was just 
a modest, good American ! 



LOUIS AGASSIZ 

Louis Agassiz was a Swiss boy who knew 
how to keep his eyes open. Some people 
walk right by things without seeing them, 
but Louis kept a sharp lookout, and nothing 
escaped him. 

Louis was born in a small Swiss village near 
a lake. His father was a minister and school 
teacher. His mother was a fine scholar and 
was very sure that she wanted her children 
to love books, but two brothers of Louis's 
had died and she meant to have Louis and 
another son, Auguste, get plenty of play and 
romping in the fields so that they would grow 
up healthy and strong, first of all; there 
would be time for study afterwards. 

The Agassiz boys had a few short lessons 
in the morning with their father or mother, 
and then they roamed through the woods and 
fields the rest of the day. Of course they 
found plenty to interest them and never came 

46 



LOUIS AGASSIZ 47 

home from these jaunts with empty hands. 
They had pet mice, birds, rabbits, and fish. 

There was a stone basin in his father's 
yard, with spring water flowing through it. 
In this Louis put his fish and then watched 
their habits. As I told you, nothing escaped 
his eyes. He proved this more than once. 

It was the custom in Swiss cantons for 
different kinds of workmen to travel from 
house to house, making such things at the 
door as each family might need. Louis 
watched the cobbler, and after he had gone 
away surprised his sister with a pair of boots 
he himself had made for her doll. And after 
the cooper had made his father some casks 
and barrels, Louis made a tiny, water-tight 
barrel, as perfect as could be. He kept his 
sharpest gaze on the tailor, and Papa Agassiz 
said to his wife: ^'Let us see, now, if Louis 
can make a suit !" They did not, in the end, 
ask him to try, but no doubt he knew pretty 
well how it was done. 

At the age of ten, Louis was sent to a college 
twenty miles from Motier, where his parents 
lived. He was keen at his lessons and asked 



48 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

questions until he mastered whatever he 
studied. The second year he went to this 
college he was joined by his brother, Augusta. 
The two boys liked the same things and never 
wanted to be away from each other. When- 
ever a vacation came, the boys walked home — 
all that twenty miles — and did not make any 
fuss about it! 

By and by the boys wanted to own books 
which would tell them about birds, fishes, 
and rocks. These were the things Louis 
was thinking of all the time. The boys saved 
every cent of their spending money for these 
books. They were always talking about 
animals. One day, as they were walking 
from Zurich to Motier, they were overtaken 
by a gentleman in a carriage. He asked them 
to ride with him and to share his lunch. They 
did so and talked to him about their studies. 
He was greatly taken with Louis, who was 
a handsome, graceful lad, as he told the 
stranger his fondness for books. The gentle- 
man hardly took his eyes from the boy, and 
a few days later Reverend Mr. Agassiz had a 
letter from him saying that he was very rich 



LOUIS AGASSIZ 49 

and that he wanted to adopt Louis. He said 
he was sure that the boy was a genius. 

Louis was not willing, though, to be any 
one's boy but his own parents', and so the 
matter was dropped. 

The boys did not have much spending 
money, and it took, oh, such a long time to 
save enough to buy even one book ! So 
they often went to a library, or borrowed a 
book from a teacher, then copied every word 
of it with pen and ink, so as to own it. You 
can see from this that they were very much in 
earnest. 

When not studying or copying, the brothers 
were busy outdoors, watching animals. In 
this way they learned just what kinds of 
fishes could be found in certain lakes, and 
almost the exact day when different birds 
would come or go from the woods. In their 
rooms the cupboards and shelves were 
crammed with shells, stuffed fishes, plants, 
and odd specimens. On the ledges of the 
windows hovered often as many as fifty kinds 
of birds who had become tamed and who 
made their home there. 



50 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

At seventeen Louis was bending over his 
desk a good many hours of the day. He 
learned French, German, Latin, Greek, 
Itahan, and Enghsh. But he was wise 
enough to keep himself well and strong by 
walking, swimming, and fencing. 

Because Louis's parents and his uncle 
wanted him to be a doctor, he studied medi- 
cine. He carried home his diploma when he 
was twenty-three and earned a degree in 
philosophy, too. But in his own heart he 
knew he would not be happy unless he could 
hunt the world over for strange creatures 
and try to find out the secrets of the old, old 
mountains. 

Louis traveled all he could and became so 
excited over the different things he discovered 
that he sometimes stopped in cities and towns 
and talked to the people, in their public halls, 
about them. He had a happy way of telling 
his news, and crowds went to listen to the 
young Swiss. 

The King of Prussia thought that any one 
who used his eyes in such good fashion ought 
to visit many places. He said to Louis : 



LOUIS AGASSIZ 51 

"Here is money for you to travel with, so 
that you may find out more of these strange 
things. You are a clever young man and can 
do much for the world ! " 

In the course of his travels, Louis Agassiz 
came to America. At that time he could not 
speak English very well, but all his stories 
were so charming that the halls were never 
large enough to hold the men and women 
who wanted to hear him. 

Louis Agassiz loved America so well that 
he made up his mind to spend the rest of 
his life here. As time passed, he decided, 
also, to give this country the benefit of all 
that he discovered. He was so bright that 
the whole world was beginning to wonder at 
him. France got jealous of America's keeping 
such a great man. So Napoleon offered him 
a high office and great honors; but Louis 
said "No," adding courageously: "I'd rather 
have the gratitude of a free people than the 
patronage of Emperors !" 

The city of Zurich begged him to return. 

" No," he wrote, " I cannot. I love America 
too well!" 



52 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

Then the city of Paris urged him to be at 
the head of their Natural History Museum, 
but this was no use, either. Nothing could 
win Louis Agassiz away from America. 

At Harvard College Agassiz was made 
professor of natural history, and there is 
to-day at Cambridge a museum of zoology, 
the largest of its kind in the world, which 
Agassiz founded and built. At his home in 
Cambridge the professor still kept strange 
pets, quite as he used to do when a boy. 
Visitors to his garden never knew when they 
might step on a live turtle, or when they might 
come suddenly upon an alligator, an eagle, 
or a timid rabbit. 

The precious dream of going to Brazil came 
true when Louis Agassiz was fifty years old. 
With a party of seventeen and his wife, 
he went on an exploring expedition to South 
America. It was a great adventure. 

Agassiz had been to many cold countries 
and had slept on glaciers night after night, 
with only a single blanket under him, but 
never in his life had he been in the tropics. 

When Agassiz arrived in South America, 



LOUIS AGASSIZ 53 

Don Pedro, the Emperor of Brazil, was glad 
to see the man who was known as a famous 
scientist and heaped all kinds of honors upon 
him. Better than all, he helped Agassiz 
get into many out-of-the-way places. 

If you want to know about a fish that has 
four eyes, about dragon-flies that are flaming 
crimson and green, and floating islands that 
are as large as a school playground, yet go 
sailing along like a ship, bearing birds, deer, 
and wild looking jaguars, read : A Journey 
to Brazil by Professor and Mrs. Agassiz. 

When you have heard the story of all these 
strange things, you will agree that Louis 
Agassiz did certainly know how to keep his 
eyes open. 



DOROTHEA LYNDE DIX 

Doctor Elisha Dix of Orange Court, 
Boston, was never happier than when his 
pet grandchild, little Dorothea Dix, came to 
visit his wife and himself. Every morning 
he had to drive about the city, in his old- 
fashioned chaise, to see how the sick people 
were getting along, and he did love to have 
Dorothea sitting beside him, her tongue 
going, as he used to declare '^like a trip- 
hammer." She was a wide-awake, quick- 
motioned creature and said such droll things 
that the doctor used to shout with laughter, 
until the dappled gray horse which he drove 
sometimes stopped short and looked round 
at the two in the chaise as if to say : ''What- 
ever in the world does all this mean?" 

But when the time drew near for Dorothea 
to go back home, she always looked sober 
enough. One day she burst out: "Oh, 
Grandpa, I almost hate tracts!" 

54 



DOROTHEA LYNDE DIX 55 

Doctor Dix glanced down at her in his kind 
way and answered: '^I don't know as I 
blame you, Child!" 

You see, Joseph Dix, Dorothea's father, 
was a strange man. He had fine chances 
to make money because the doctor had bought 
one big lot of land after another and had to 
hire agents to look after these farms and 
forests. Naturally he sent his own son to 
the pleasantest places, but the only thing 
Joseph Dix, who was very religious in the 
gloomiest sort of a way, really wanted to do, 
was to repeat hymns and write tracts. To 
publish these dismal booklets, he used nearly 
all the money he earned, so that the family 
had small rations of food, cheap clothing, 
and no holidays. 

Besides having to live in such sorry fashion, 
the whole household were forced to stitch 
and paste these tracts together. Year after 
year Mrs. Dix, Dorothea, and her two brothers 
sat in the house, doing this tiresome work. 
No matter whether, as agent, Mr. Dix was 
sent to Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, 
or Massachusetts; no matter whether their 



56 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

playmates in the neighborhood were berrying, 
skating, or picnicking; no matter how the 
birds sang, the brooks sparkled, the nuts 
and fruit ripened; the wife and children of 
Joseph Dix had no outdoor pleasures, no, 
they just bent over those old tracts, pasting 
and sewing till they fairly ached. 

When Dorothea was twelve, she decided to 
stand such a life no longer. Fortunately the 
family was then living in Worcester, near 
Boston, and it did not cost much to get there. 
Doctor Dix was dead, but Dorothea ran away 
to her grandmother, who still lived at Orange 
Court (now it is called Dix Place), and al- 
though Madam Dix was very strict, life was 
better there than with the tract-maker. 

At Orange Court, Dorothea was allowed no 
time to play. She was taught to sew and 
cook and knit and was sometimes punished 
if the tasks were not well done. "Poor 
thing," she said in after life, ''I never had any 
childhood!" But she went to school and 
was so quick at her lessons that in two years 
she went back to Worcester and opened a 
school for little children. She was only 



DOROTHEA LYNDE DIX 57 

fourteen and rather small for her age, so she 
put on long dresses and piled her hair on top 
of her head with a high comb. I think 
people never guessed how young she was. 
Anyway, she proved a good teacher, and the 
children loved her and never disobeyed her. 

After keeping this school for a year, she 
studied again in Boston until she was nine- 
teen. Then she not only taught a day and 
boarding-school in that city, but looked after 
her brothers and opened another school for 
poor children whose parents could not afford 
to pay for their lessons. She took care of her 
grandmother's house, too. While every one 
was wondering how one young girl could do 
so much, she made them open their eyes still 
wider by writing three or four books. 

By and by her health broke down, and she 
began to think that she could never work any 
more, but after a long rest in England she 
came back to America and did something far 
greater than teaching or writing — she went 
through the whole country making prisons, 
jails, and asylums more comfortable. Up 
to the time of Dorothea Dix's interest, no 



58 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

one had seemed to bother his head about 
prisoners and insane people. Any kind of a 
place that had a lock and key was good enough 
for such to sleep in. And what did it matter 
if a wicked man or a crazy man was cold or 
hungry? But it mattered very much to 
Dorothea Dix that human beings were being 
ill-treated, and she meant to start a reform. 
She talked with senators, governors, and presi- 
dents. She visited the places in each State 
where prisoners, the poor, and the crazy 
were shut up. She talked kindly to these 
shut-ins, and she talked wrathfully to the 
men who ill-treated them. She made speeches 
before legislatures; she wrote articles for 
the papers, and begged money from mil- 
lionaires to build healthy almshouses and 
asylums. This was seventy years ago, when 
traveling was slow and dangerous in the west 
and south. She had so many delays on 
account of stage-coaches breaking down on 
rough or muddy roads that finally she made 
a practice of carrying with her an outfit of 
hammer, wrench, nails, screws, a coil of stout 
rope, and straps of strong leather. Some of 



DOROTHEA LYNDE DIX 59 

the western rivers had to be forded, and many 
times she nearly lost her life. Once, when 
riding in a stage-coach in Michigan, a robber 
sprang out of a dark place in the forest 
through which they were passing and de- 
manded her purse. She did not scream or 
faint. She asked him if he was not ashamed 
to molest a woman who was going through the 
country to help prisoners. She told him if 
he was really poor, she would give him some 
money. And what do you think? Before 
she finished speaking, the robber recognized 
her voice. He had heard her talk to the 
prisoners when he was a convict in a Phila- 
delphia prison ! He begged her to go on her 
way in peace. 

For twelve years Miss Dix went through 
the United States in the interests of the deaf 
and dumb, the blind, and the insane. Then 
she went to Europe to rest. But she found 
the same suffering there as here. In no 
time she was busy again. She tried to get 
audience with the Pope in Rome to beg 
him to stop some prison cruelties but was 
always put off. Any one else would have 



60 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

given up, but Dorothea Dix always carried 
her point. One day she met the Pope's car- 
riage in the street. She stopped it, and as 
she knew no Italian, began talking fast to 
him in Latin. She was so earnest and sensible 
that he gave her everything she asked for. 

It was not long after her return to America 
before the Civil War broke out. She went 
straight to Washington and offered to nurse 
the soldiers without pay. As she was ap- 
pointed superintendent, she had all the nurses 
under her rule. She hired houses to keep 
supplies in, she bought an ambulance, she 
gave her time, strength, and fortune to her 
country. In the whole four years of the Civil 
War, Dorothea Dix never took a holiday. 
She was so interested in her work that often 
she forget to eat her meals until reminded of 
them. 

After this war was over, the Secretary of 
War, Honorable Edwin M. Stanton, asked 
her how the nation could show its gratitude 
to her for the grand work she had done. She 
told him she would like a flag. Two very 
beautiful ones were given her, made with 



DOROTHEA LYNDE DIX 61 

special printed tributes on them. In her 
will Miss Dix left these flags to Harvard 
College. They hang over the doors of Memo- 
rial Hall. 

Nobody ever felt sorry that Dorothea ran 
away from those tiresome tracts. For prob- 
ably all the tracts ever written by Joseph 
Dix never did as much good as a single day's 
work of his daughter, among the wounded 
soldiers. And as for her reforms — they will 
go on forever. She has been called the most 
useful woman of America. That is a great 
name to earn. 



^ ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT 

Once upon a time, at Point Pleasant, a 
small town on the Ohio River, there lived a 
young couple who could not decide how to 
name their first baby. He was a darling 
child, and as the weeks went by, and he grew 
prettier every minute, it was harder and 
harder to think of a name good enough for 
him. 

Finally Jesse Grant, the father, told his wife, 
Hannah, he thought it would be a good plan 
to ask the grandparents' advice. So off they 
rode from their little cottage, carrying the 
baby with them. 

But at grandpa's it was even worse. In 
that house there were four people besides 
themselves to suit. At last, the father, 
mother, grandfather, grandmother, and the 
two aunts each wrote a favorite name on a 
bit of paper. These slips of paper were all 
put into grandpa's tall, silk hat which was 

62 



ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT 63 

placed on the spindle-legged table. ''Now," 
said the father to one of the aunts, "draw 
from the hat a slip of paper, and whatever 
name is written on that slip shall be the name 
of my son." 

The slip she drew had the name ''Ulysses" 
on it. 

"Well," murmured the grandfather, "our 
dear child is named for a great soldier of the 
olden days. But I wanted him to be called 
Hiram, who was a good king in Bible times." 

Then Hannah Grant, who could not bear 
to have him disappointed, answered : "Let 
him have both names!" So the baby was 
christened Hiram Ulysses Grant. 

While Ulysses was still a baby, his parents 
moved to Georgetown, Ohio. There his 
father built a nice new brick house and 
managed a big farm besides his regular work of 
tanning leather. As Ulysses got old enough 
to help at any kind of work, it was plain he 
would never be a tanner. He hated the 
smell of leather. But he was perfectly happy 
on the farm. He liked best of all to be round 
the horses, and before he was six years old he 



64 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

rode horseback as well as any man in George- 
town. When he was seven, it was part of 
his work to drive the span of horses in a heavy 
team that carried the cord-wood from the 
wood-lot to the house and shop. He must 
have been a strong boy, for at the age of 
eleven he used to hold the plow when his 
father wanted to break up new land, and it 
makes the arms and back ache to hold a heavy 
plow ! He was patient with all animals and 
knew just how to manage them. His father 
and all the neighbors had Ulysses break their 
colts. 

In the winters Ulysses went to school, 
but he did not care for it as much as he did 
for outdoor life and work with his hands. 
Still he usually had his lessons and was 
decidedly bright in arithmetic. Because he 
was not a shirk and always told the truth, 
his father was in the habit of saying, after 
the farm chores were done: ''Now, Ulysses, 
you can take the horse and carriage and go 
where you like. I know I can trust you." 

When he was only twelve, his father began 
sending him seventy or eighty miles away from 



ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT 65 

home, on business errands. These trips would 
take him two days. Sometimes he went 
alone, and sometimes he took one of his 
chums with him. Talking so much with 
grown men gave him an old manner, and 
as his judgment was pretty good he was called 
by merchants a ^' sharp one." He would have 
been contented to jaunt about the country, 
trading and colt-breaking, all his life, but his 
father decided he ought to have military 
training and obtained for him an appoint- 
ment at West Point (the United States' 
school for training soldiers that was started 
by George Washington) without Ulysses 
knowing a thing about it. Now Ulysses 
did not have the least desire to be a soldier and 
did not want to go to this school one bit, 
but he had always obeyed his father, and 
started on a fifteen days' journey from 
Ohio without any more talk than the simple 
statement: "I don't want to go, but if you 
say so, I suppose I must." 

He found, when he reached the school, 
that his name had been changed. Up to 
this time his initials had spelled HUG, but 



66 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

the senator who sent young Grant's appoint- 
ment papers to Washington had forgotten 
Ulysses' middle name. He wrote his full name 
as Ulysses Simpson Grant, and as it would 
make much trouble to have it changed at Con- 
gress, Ulysses let it stand that way. So instead 
of being called H-U-G Grant (as he had been 
by his mates at home) the West Point boys, 
to tease him, caught up the new initials and 
shouted "Uncle Sam" Grant, or "United 
States" Grant — and sometimes "Useless" 
Grant. 

But the Ohio boy was good-natured and 
only laughed at them. He was a cool, 
slow-moving chap, well-behaved, and was 
never known to say a profane word in his life. 
At this school there was plenty of chance to 
prove his skill with horses. Ulysses was never 
happier than when he started off for the 
riding-hall with his spurs clanking on the 
ground and his great cavalry sword dangling 
by his side. Once, mounted on a big sorrel 
horse, and before a visiting "Board of Direc- 
tors," he made the highest jump that had 
ever been known at West Point. He was 



ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT 67 

as modest as could be about this jump, 
but the other cadets (as the pupils were 
called) bragged about it till they were hoarse. 

After his graduation, Grant, with his regi- 
ment, was sent to the Mexican border. In 
the battle of Palo Alto he had his first taste 
of war. Being truthful, he confessed after- 
wards that when he heard the booming of 
the big guns, he was frightened almost to 
pieces. But he had never been known to 
shirk, and he not only rode into the powder 
and smoke that day, but for two years 
proved so brave and calm in danger that he 
was promoted several times. But he did 
not like fighting. He was sure of that. 

At the end of the Mexican War, Ulysses 
married a girl from St. Louis, named Julia 
Dent, and she went to live, as soldiers' wives 
do, in whatever military post to which he 
happened to be sent. First the regiment was 
stationed at Lake Ontario, then at Detroit, 
and then, dear me! it was ordered to Cali- 
fornia ! 

There were no railroads in those days. 
People had to go three thousand miles on 



68 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

horseback or in slow, lumbering wagons. 
This took months and was both tiresome and 
dangerous. Every little while there would be 
a deep river to ford, or some wicked Indians 
skulking round, or a wild beast threatening. 
The officers decided to take their regiments to 
\California by water. This would be a hard 
trip but a safer one. 

It was lucky that Mrs. Grant and the babies 
stayed behind with the grandparents, for 
besides the weariness of the long journey, 
there was scarcity of food ; a terrible cholera 
plague broke out, and Ulysses Grant worked 
night and day. He had to keep his soldiers 
fed, watch out for the Indians, and nurse the 
sick people. 

Well, after eleven years of army life, Grant 
decided to resign from the service. He 
thought war was cruel; he wanted to be 
with his wife and children ; and a soldier got 
such small pay that he wondered how he was 
ever going to be able to educate the children. 
Farming would be better than fighting, he 
said. 

He was welcomed home with great joy. 



ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT 69 

His wife owned a bit of land, and Grant built 
a log cabin on it. He planted crops, cut 
wood, kept horses and cows, and worked 
from sunrise till dark. But the land was 
so poor that he named the place Hardscrabble. 
Even with no money and hard work, the 
Grants were happy until the climate gave 
Ulysses a fever; then they left Missouri 
country life and moved into the city of St. 
Louis. 

In this city Grant tried his hand at selling 
houses, laying out streets, and working in 
the custom-house ; but something went wrong 
in every place he got. He had to move into 
poorer houses, he had to borrow money, 
ana finally he walked the streets trying to 
find some new kind of work. Nobody would 
hire him. The men said he was a failure. 
Friends of the Dent family shook their heads 
as they whispered: "Poor Julia, she didn't 
get much of a husband, did she?" 

Then he went back to Galena, Illinois, 
and was a clerk in his brother's store, earning 
about what any fifteen-year-old boy gets 
to-day. He worked quietly in the store all 



70 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

day, stayed at home evenings, and was called 
a very ' ' commonplace man . " He was bitterly 
discouraged, I tell you, that he could not get 
ahead in the world. And his father's pride 
was hurt to think that his son who had ap- 
peared so smart at twelve could not, as a 
grown man, take care of his own family. But 
Julia Dent Grant was sweet and kind. She 
kept telling him that he would have better 
luck pretty soon. 

In 1861 the Americans began to quarrel 
among themselves. Several of the States 
grew very bitter against each other and were 
so stubborn that the President of the United 
States, Abraham Lincoln, said he must have 
seventy-five thousand men to help him stop 
such rebellion. Ulysses Grant came forward, 
and said he would be one of these seventy-five 
thousand, and enlisted again in the United 
States Army. He was asked to be the colonel 
of an Illinois regiment by the governor 'of 
that State. Then, you may be sure, what he 
had learned at West Point came into good 
play. He soon showed that he knew 
just how to train men into fine soldiers. 



ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT 71 

He did so well that he was made Brigadier- 
general. 

He stormed right through the enemies^ 
lines and took fort after fort. Oh, his work 
was splendid — this man who had been called 
a failure ! 

A general who was fighting against him 
began to get frightened, and by and by he 
sent Grant a note saying: ''What terms will 
you make with us if we will give in just a 
little and do partly as you want us to?" 

Grant laughed when he read the letter and 
wrote back: ''No terms at all but uncondi- 
tional surrender!" Finally the other general 
did surrender, and when the story of the 
two letters and the victory for Grant was 
told, the initials of his name were twisted into 
another phrase ; he was called Unconditional 
Surrender Grant. This saying was quoted 
for months, every time his name was men- 
tioned. At the end of that time, he had said 
something else that pleased the people and 
the President. 

You see, the war kept raging harder and 
harder. It seemed as if it would never end. 



72 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

Grant was always at the front of his troops, 
watching everything the enemy did and 
planned, but he grew sadder and sadder. 
He felt sure there would be fighting until dear, 
brave Robert E. Lee, the southern general, 
laid down his sword. The whole country was 
sad and anxious. They said: ''It is time 
there was a change — what in the world is 
Grant going to do?" And he answered: 
''I am going to fight it out on this line if it 
takes all summer!" No one doubted he 
would keep his word. It did take all summer 
and aU winter, too. Then, when poor General 
Lee saw that his men were completely trapped, 
and that they would starve if he did not give 
in, he yielded. Grant showed how much 
of a gentleman he was by his treatment of 
the general and soldiers he had conquered. 
There was no lack of courtesy toward them, 
I can tell you. When the cruel war was 
ended. Grant was the nation's hero. 

Later, Grant was made President of the 
United States he had saved. When he had 
finished his term of four years, he was chosen 
for President again. After that he traveled 



ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT 73 

round the world. I cannot begin to tell you 
the number of presents he received or de- 
scribe one half the honors which were paid 
him — paid to this man who, at one time, 
could not get a day's work in St. Louis. This 
farmer from Hardscrabble dined with kings 
and queens, talked with the Pope of Rome, 
called on the Czar of Russia, visited the 
Mikado of Japan in his royal palace, and was 
given four beautiful homes of his own by rich 
Americans. One house was in Galena, one 
in Philadelphia, one in Washington, and 
another in New York. New York was his 
favorite city, and in a square named for him 
you can see a statue showing General Grant 
on his pet horse, in army uniform. On 
Claremont Heights where it can be seen from 
the city, the harbor, and the Hudson River, 
stands a magnificent tomb, the resting-place 
of the great hero who was born in the tiny 

house at Point Pleasant. 

< 

There was always a good deal of fighting 
blood in the Grants. The sixth or seventh 
great-grandfather of Ulysses, Matthew Grant, 
came to Massachusetts in 1630, almost three 



74 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

hundred years ago ; over in Scotland, where 
he was born, he belonged to the clan whose 
motto was "Stand Fast." I think that old 
Scotchman and all the other ancestors would 
agree with us that the boy from Ohio stood 
fast. And how well the name suited him 
which his aunt drew from the old silk hat — ■ 
Ulysses — a brave soldier of the olden time ! 



CLARA BARTON 

It was on the brightest, sunniest kind of a 
Christmas morning, nearly one hundred years 
ago, that Clara Barton was born, in the 
State of Massachusetts. Besides the parents, 
there were two grown-up sisters and two big 
brothers to pet the new baby. There was 
plenty of love and plenty of money in the 
Barton household, so the child knew nothing 
but happiness. 

Clara was a bright little thing. As she 
grew old enough to walk and talk, she followed 
the family about, repeating all their words 
and phrases like a parrot. She was not sure 
as to the meaning of all these words, but 
she liked the sound of them. Her father, 
who had fought in the French and Indian 
wars, had a fondness for the rules and forms 
that are used among soldiers. He taught 
her the names and rank of army officers. 

75 



76 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

Also the name of the United States' president, 
the vice-president, and members of the presi- 
dent's cabinet. 

Clara's eyes looked so big, and her voice was 
so solemn when she babbled these names 
that her mother asked her one day what she 
thought these men looked like. '' Oh," gasped 
Clara, ''Papa always says 'the great presi- 
dent' so I guess he's almost a giant. I guess 
the president is as big as the meeting-house, 
and prob'ly the vice-president is the size of 
the school-house." 

The school-teacher sisters were busy with 
Clara so that she was reading and spelling 
almost as soon as she could talk. One of these 
gave her a geography, and Clara was so excited 
over it that she used to wake this poor sister 
up long before daylight, and make her hold 
a candle close to the maps so that she could 
find rivers, mountains, and cities. 

Stephen Barton, the older brother, was a 
wonder in arithmetic. It was he who taught 
Clara how to add, subtract, multiply, and 
divide. She made such good figures and so 
often had the examples right that she en- 



CLARA BARTON 77 

joyed her little slate next best to riding horse- 
back with her brother David. 

David did not care much for study, but did 
like farm work and horses. He taught Clara 
to ride, and the two used to gallop across the 
country at a mad pace. She felt as safe on 
the back of a horse as in a rocking-chair. 
She did not look much larger than a doll 
when the neighbors first noticed her dashing 
by on the back of a colt which wore neither 
saddle nor bridle, clinging to the animal's 
mane, keeping close to David's horse, and 
laughing with joy. Sometimes Button, the 
white dog, tore along after them, trying his 
best to keep up with them. Button belonged 
to Clara. He had taken care of her when she 
was a baby, and very gravely picked her up 
each time she fell in the days when she was 
learning to walk. 

Stephen and David went to a school that 
was several miles away. They wanted to 
take Clara with them. It was one of the old- 
fashioned, ungraded schools, and the pupils 
were all ages. The snowdrifts were high, 
and Stephen carried Clara on his shoulder. 



78 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

Clara sat very quiet with her slate until the 
primer class was called. Then she stepped 
before the teacher with the other little ones. 
The serious man pointed to the letters of 
different words for each child, then he asked 
them to spell short words like dog and cat. 
When Clara was asked to do the same, she 
smiled at the teacher and said: "But I do 
not spell there !'^ 

"Where do you spell?" he inquired. 

"I spell in artichoke," she answered, looking 
very dignified. 

"In that case," he laughed, "I think you 
belong with the scholars who spell in three 
and four syllables." So after that, she spelled 
in the class of her big brothers. 

When Clara was twelve, she was very shy 
of strangers, and her parents thought it 
might help her to get over it if she went away 
from home to school in New York. She was 
a bright pupil and decided she would like 
to be a teacher like her two sisters. 

Clara made an excellent teacher, but was not 
very well and went to Washington, D. C, to 
work. While there, the Civil War broke out, 



CLARA BARTON 79 

and she offered her services as a nurse. No- 
body doubted she would be good at nursing, 
for when she was only ten years old, she took 
all the care of her dear brother David, who 
was sick for nearly two years. She really 
knew just exactly what sick people needed. 

Clara worked in hospitals, camps, and 
battlefields all the time the four years' war 
lasted. Sometimes she had to jump on to 
a horse whose rider had been shot and dash 
away for bandages or a surgeon, and she was 
glad enough that David had taught her to be 
such a fine horsewoman. 

Clara helped every sick and wounded man 
she came across, and some people thought 
she should only help the northerners. But 
she did not mind what anybody said or thought. 
She made all the soldiers as comfortable as 
she could. And she was delighted when, 
four years later, while she was in beautiful 
Switzerland for a rest, she heard of the Red 
Cross Society. This society helped every 
wounded person, no matter what color he 
was, no matter what cause or country he 
fought for. 



80 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

Clara Barton worked with this Swiss society 
all through the war between France and 
Prussia. The foreigners called her the Angel. 

When Clara Barton came back to America, 
she tried a long time to have a branch of the 
Swiss society started in this country, but it 
was eight years before the Red Cross Society 
was actually formed in America. Then, be- 
cause there was often sickness and suffering 
from fires and floods, as well as from wars, Miss 
Barton persuaded Congress to say that the 
society might help wherever there had been 
any great disaster. 

Miss Barton's name is known in Europe 
as well as in America. She did Red Cross 
work until she was eighty years old. Almost 
every country on the globe gave her a present 
or medal. When we think what a heroine 
Clara Barton proved herself, it would seem 
as if the little girl born on the sunny December 
morning was a Christmas present to the 
whole world. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

The more you find out about Abraham 
Lincoln, the more you will love him. 

Abraham was born in Kentucky and lived 
in that State with his parents and his one 
sister until he was eight years old. 

The Lincolns were very, very poor. They 
lived in a small log cabin on the banks of a 
winding creek. They need not have been 
quite so poor, but the truth of the matter is 
that Mr. Thomas Lincoln, Abraham's father, 
was lazy. To be sure he fastened a few logs 
together for shelter, cut a little wood, and dug 
up some ground for a garden. But after the 
corn and potatoes were planted, they never 
received any care, and there is no doubt the 
family would have gone hungry many a day 
if Abraham had not hurried home with fish 
which he caught in a near-by stream, or if 
Mrs. Lincoln had not taken her rifle into the 

81 



82 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

woods and shot a deer or a bear. The meat 
from these would last for weeks, and the 
skins of animals Mrs. Lincoln always saved 
to make into clothes for the children. 

Thomas Lincoln could not read or spell, 
and as near as I can find out, was not a bit 
ashamed of it, either. But his wife, Nancy 
Hanks Lincoln, was a fair scholar and taught 
Abraham and his sister, Sarah, to read and 
speU. 

There was no floor to the Lincoln's log 
cabin and no furnishings but a few three- 
legged stools and a bed made of wooden slats 
fastened together with pegs. Abraham and 
Sarah slept on piles of leaves or brush. 

Slates and pencils were scarce, and Abra- 
ham used to lie before the fire when he was 
seven or eight years old, with a flat slab of 
wood and a stick which he burned at one end 
till it was charred ; then he formed letters 
with it on the wood. In that way he taught 
himself to write. His mother had three 
books, a Bible, a catechism, and a spelling- 
book. He had never had any boy playmate 
and was greatly excited when an aunt and 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 83 

uncle of his mother's, Mr. and Mrs. Sparrow, 
with a nephew, named Dennis Hanks, arrived 
at the creek and Uved in a half-faced camp 
near by. Dennis and Abraham became fast 
friends. 

A fever swept the country, and Abraham's 
mother died. Three years later his father 
married a new wife. The second Mrs. Lin- 
coln had been married before and had three 
children, a boy and two girls. So there were 
five children to play together. Mr. Lincoln 
had built a better cabin, and she brought such 
furniture as the Lincoln children had never 
seen. Their eyes opened wide at the sight of 
real chairs and tables. She made Abraham 
and Sarah pretty new clothes. They had 
neat, comfortable beds, and the two sets of 
children were very happy. Mrs. Lincoln 
loved Abraham and saw that there was the 
making of a smart man in him. She helped 
him study, and when there was school for a 
short time in a distant log hut, she sent Abra- 
ham every day. When the school ended, 
there were four years when there was no school 
anjrwhere near their settlement, so she read 



84 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BlbORAPHY 

with Abraham and kept him at his lessons in 
reading and arithmetic all that time. 

Hunters and traders rode that way some- 
times, and if a traveler had a book about 
him, Abraham was sure to get a look at it. 

A new settler had a Life of Washington, 
Abraham looked at the book hungrily for 
weeks and finally worked up courage to ask 
the loan of it. He promised to take good care 
of it. He was then earning money to give 
his parents by chopping down trees in the 
forests, and he had no time to read but in the 
evenings. One night the rain soaked through 
the cracks of the cabin, and the precious book 
that he had promised to take good care of was 
stained on every page. What was he to do? 
He had no money to pay for the book, but he 
hurried to the settler's cabin and told him 
what had happened. He offered to work 
in the cornfield for three days to pay Mr. 
Crawford for the loss of the book. It was 
heavy work, but he did it and, in the end, 
owned the stained Life of Washington, himself. 

Abraham had a fine memory. He could 
repeat almost the whole of a sermon, a speech, 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 85 

or a story that he had happened to hear. He 
had a funny way of telling stories, too, so when 
the farmers or woodchoppers were taking 
their noon rest, they always asked him to 
amuse them. 

When Abraham was sixteen years old, he 
was six feet tall and so strong that all the 
neighbors hired him whenever he was not 
working for his father. He joked and 
laughed at his work, and every one liked him. 
He did any kind of work to earn an honest 
penny. Once he had a fine time working 
for a man that ran a ferry-boat, because this 
man owned a history of the United States 
and took a newspaper, and Abraham had 
more to read than ever before in his life. 
But he had to take the time he should have 
slept to read, because when the boat wasn't 
running there was farm work, housework 
(for he helped this man's wife, even to tending 
the baby), and rail splitting. Then he kept 
store for a man. It was here that he won a 
nickname that he kept all his life — ''Honest 
Abe." A woman's bill came to two dollars 
and six cents. Later in the day Abraham 



86 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

found he had charged her six cents too much. 
After he closed the store that night, he walked 
three miles to pay her back those six cents. 
Another time when he weighed tea for a 
woman, there was a weight on the scales so 
that she did not get as much tea as she paid 
for. That meant another long tramp. But 
he was liked for his honesty and good nature. 

When there was trouble with the Indians, 
Abraham proved that he could fight and also 
manage troops, so he was a captain for three 
months. 

Abraham was so well informed that the 
people sent him to legislature. They made him 
postmaster. They hired him to lay out roads 
and towns. It became the fashion, if there 
was need of some honest, skilful work, for 
people to say : "Why not get Abraham Lincoln 
to do it? Then you'll know it's done right." 

He studied law, went to legislature again, 
and became a circuit judge. This meant 
that he had to ride all round the country to 
attend different courts. He would start off 
on horseback to be away three months, with 
saddle-bags holding clean linen, an old green 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 87 

umbrella, and a few books to read as he rode 
along. When he came to woodchoppers, 
as he rode through forests, he liked to dis- 
mount, ask for an axe, and chop a log so 
quickly that the men would stare. 

Abraham Lincoln settled, with his wife and 
children, in Springfield, Illinois. He was a 
lawyer but would not take a case if he 
thought his client was guilty. He was still 
*' Honest Abe." He loved children and usu- 
ally when he went to his office in the morning, 
the baby was perched on his shoulder, while 
the others held on to his coat tails and fol- 
lowed behind. All the children in Spring- 
field felt he was their friend. No wonder, 
for he was never too busy to help them. One 
morning as he was hurrying to his law office, 
he saw a little girl, very much dressed up, 
crying as if her heart would break. Her 
sobs almost shook her off the doorstep where 
she sat. Mr. Lincoln unlatched the gate 
and went up the walk, singing out : ** Well, 
well, now what does all this mean?" 

"Oh, Mr. Lincoln, I was going to Chicago 
to visit my aunt. I have my ticket in my 



88 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

purse and/' here the sobs came faster than 
ever, ''the expressman can't get here in time 
for my trunk." 

"How big is your trunk?" 

"This size," stretching her hands apart. 

"Pooh, I'll carry that trunk to the station 
for you, myself . Where is it?" 

The little girl pointed to the hall, and in a 
minute Mr. Lincoln, with his tall silk hat on 
his head, his long coat tails flying out behind, 
the trunk on his shoulder, was striding to the 
railroad station, as the now happy little girl 
skipped beside him. He was not going to 
have the child disappointed. 

Mr. Lincoln had a big heart. It never 
bothered him to stop long enough to do a 
kindness. One bitterly cold day he saw an 
old man chopping wood. He was feeble and 
was shaking with the cold. Mr. Lincoln 
watched him for a few minutes and then asked 
him how much he was to be paid for the 
whole lot. "One dollar," he answered, "and 
I need it to buy shoes." "I should think you 
did," said the lawyer, noticing that the poor 
old man's toes showed through the holes of 




How big is your trunk ? " Page 88. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 89 

those he was wearing. Then he gently took 
the axe from the man's hands and said : 
''You go in by the fire and keep warm, and 
I'll do the wood." Mr. Lincoln made the 
chips fly. He chopped so fast that the 
passers-by never stopped talking about it. 

Abraham Lincoln was known to be honest, 
unselfish, and clear-headed. He had grown 
very wise by much reading and study. Fi- 
nally the people of the United States paid 
him the greatest honor that can come to an 
American. They made him President. Yes, 
this man who had taught himself to write in 
the Kentucky log cabin was President of the 
United States ! 

As President, Mr. Lincoln lived in style at 
the White House. But he was just the same 
quiet, modest man that he had always been. 
He was busier, that was all. 

When President Lincoln spoke to the people, 
or sent letters (messages, they are called) to 
Congress, every one said: "What a brain 
that man has!" But he used very short, 
simple words. Once he gave a reason for 
this. He said it used to make him angry. 



90 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

when he was a child, to hear the neighbors 
talk to his father in a way that he could not 
understand. He would lie awake, sometimes, 
half the night, trying to think what they 
meant. When he thought he had at last 
got the idea, he would put it into the simplest 
words he knew, so that any boy would know 
what was meant. This got to be a habit, 
and even in his great talk at Gettysburg the 
beautiful words are short and plain. 

One day when Lincoln was running the 
ferry-boat for the man I have spoken of 
before, he saw at one of the river landings 
some negro slaves getting a terrible beating 
by their master. He was only a boy, but 
he never forgot the sight, and one of the 
things he brought about when he became 
President of the United States was the free- 
dom of the black people. 

There are a great many lives and stories 
about Lincoln which you will read and enjoy, 
and it is certain that the more you know of 
this great man. Dear "Honest Abe," the 
better you will love him. 



ROBERT EDWARD LEE 

Small Robert Lee, of Virginia, aged five, 
was playing one day with another boy of his 
own age, whose mother was visiting Mrs. 
Lee. The Lees had lived for two centuries 
in the beautiful brick mansion/' Stratford," 
on the Potomac River. While the boys 
played on the veranda, there was the sound 
of busy feet inside the house, and an air of 
bustle and hurrying to and fro. Robert 
knew the cause of this and was feeling very 
happy. His father, Colonel Robert E. Lee, 
was coming home from Mexico, where he had 
done brave things in the Mexican War. The 
story of this had been in the papers, and 
though Robert had not seen his father for 
two years and sometimes could not remember 
just how he looked, he knew from the way 
people mentioned Colonel Lee's name that he 
was a man to be proud of. 

When Eliza, Robert's black mammy, called 

91 



92 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

him in to be dressed, there was trouble. He 
would not wear what she had ready for him. 
He was the Colonel's namesake, and if his 
father was coming home, nothing was nice 
enough but his best frock of blue and white. 

Small Robert had his way about the frock. 
His hair was freshly curled, and he rushed 
down to the broad hall, where the family were 
waiting for Colonel Lee. The lady visitor 
had pinned a rose in her hair, and the other 
little boy had been dressed in his prettiest 
clothes. Pretty soon there were shouts of 
''Here he comes — here he comes!" and 
they could see Colonel Lee, in a handsome 
uniform, riding his chestnut horse, Grace 
Darling. 

He sprang from the horse and up the steps, 
and when he had greeted the older ones, he 
sang out : ''Where's my little boy — where's 
Robbie?" He seized the child nearest him 
and kissed him half a dozen times. 

But it wasn't Robert that he kissed. It 
was the other boy ! 

For a minute Robert cried, but his father 
had plenty of kisses for him when he found 



ROBERT EDWARD LEE 93 

what a mistake he had made, and he whis- 
pered something to Robert that made every- 
thing all right. There was a mustang pony- 
on the way from Mexico for his little son ! 

This pony was pure white. A faithful Irish 
servant taught Robert to ride in a short time, 
and he was the proudest boy in the world 
when he rode out on Santa Anna beside his 
father on Grace Darling. Robert bragged 
a good deal to his playmates about Grace 
Darling, because she had carried his father 
all through the Mexican War and had the 
scars of seven bullets on her sides. 

Colonel Lee loved animals and taught all 
his children to be kind to their pets. When 
the family lived in Arlington, "Spec," a lively 
black and tan terrier, went everjnvhere with 
them, even to church. Colonel Lee thought 
he made the children restless, so one Sunday, 
when they started for church, he shut Spec 
in a chamber in the second story. Spec 
looked out of the window for awhile. It was 
open, and he soon made up his mind that he 
would rather be with his friends. So he 
jumped to the ground, ran as fast as he could, 



94 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

and walked into the pew just behind the 
family. After that he was allowed to go to 
church every Sunday. 

Colonel Robert E. Lee was a very handsome 
man. When he and Mrs. Lee were going out 
in the evening, the children always begged to 
sit up and see them start. They never saw 
any man or any picture of a man they thought 
so beautiful as their own father. 

General Lee was not just a good leader of 
soldiers ; he knew how to make everyone mind, 
and although he was the best playmate his 
children had, he was very firm with them. 
No slipshod ways were allowed in his house. 
No, indeed! If his boys and girls were not 
tidy about their clothes, faithful in their 
lessons, polite, and truthful, they found their 
father stern enough. 

When their father was so quick at sports 
and games and could plan such perfectly 
splendid holidays, it did seem pretty hard to 
the Lee children that he was so often sent 
away on war duties. But wherever he was, 
he found time from his military affairs to 
write long letters to his children, and these 



ROBERT EDWARD LEE 95 

were so playful and told of so many strange 
things that it partly made up for his absence. 
The neighboring playmates used to watch 
for those letters almost as eagerly as the 
family, and probably they envied the Lee 
children sometimes when their father came 
for a visit, wearing some new honor or title. 
For as he was wise and good and brave, he 
did not fail to rise higher and higher in rank. 
His father had been a general under George 
Washington and had taught his son that 
there is no grander honor for a man than to 
defend his country. And in order that 
Robert should make a fine soldier, he had 
been trained at West Point. When he had 
proved how keen and skilful he was, Abraham 
Lincoln, then president of the United States, 
asked Robert E. Lee, who had become a gen- 
eral, to take command of all the armies of 
the Union. 

But general Lee was much troubled in his 
mind. Just then there was danger of the 
northern and southern States fighting against 
each other. If the people of the different 
States should really grow so angry that they 



96 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

came to blows, Lee felt he must stand by- 
Virginia, because that was his father's State. 
Indeed, the Lees had lived there since 1642, 
and Robert Lee loved every inch of its soil. 
He felt sad enough when he found there must 
be fighting, but he could not accept Lincoln's 
offer, so he gave up his high place in the 
United States Army and took the post of 
Major-general among the Virginian soldiers. 

Then the Lee family had to do without their 
father and chum for four long years. They 
had grown up by this time, and all their 
childhood pets were dead. Grace Darling's 
place was taken by Traveller, an iron-gray 
horse with black points. He was so large and 
strong it did not seem possible to tire him out. 
He carried General Lee all through the Civil 
War. He often went cold and hungry, but 
he loved his master and would come when 
he heard the general's whistle or call, no 
matter how far away he might be. The 
soldiers loved Lee, too, and they obeyed his 
slightest wish. 

The Civil War was long and^ cruel, as all 
war is, and at the end Lee had to yield be- 



ROBERT EDWARD LEE 97 

cause his men were starving. But he is 
counted as one of the greatest generals 
known in history, and his fame will never 
die. 

The little Robert E. Lee, who rode the 
mustang pony, is now a gray-haired man. 
He has written the life of his father and has 
told how General Lee became a college presi- 
dent after the War. The students loved their 
president as well as the soldiers loved their 
general, and they always felt proud of him 
as he went galloping past them on dear old 
Traveller after the duties were over for the 
day. Good old Traveller deserved a medal, 
if ever a horse did, for sharing the dangers 
of her gallant master. General Robert E. Lee. 



JOHN JAMES AUDUBON 

Have you ever happened to see a book that 
cost a thousand dollars? 

A man who loved birds and knew a great 
deal about them drew pictures of all the kinds 
to be found in our country, calling these 
drawings, when they were colored and bound 
together The Birds of North America. It 
took four volumes to hold all these pictures, 
and each one of these books costs a thousand 
dollars. There were only seventy-five or 
eighty of these sets of bird books made, but 
you can see them in the Boston Public 
Library, the Lenox and Astor libraries in New 
York city, and at several colleges and private 
homes. Each one of these books is more 
than three feet long and a little over two feet 
wide, and is so heavy that it takes two strong 
men to lift it on to a rack when some one 
wants to look at the pictures. If you should 
look through aU four books, you would see 

98 



JOHN JAMES AUDUBON 99 

more than a thousand kinds of birds, all 
drawn as big as life, and each one colored like 
the bird itself. 

You may be sure it took the maker of these 
books many, many years to travel all over 
the United States to find such a number of 
birds. The man's name was John James 
Audubon. He slept in woods, waded through 
marshes and swamps, tramped hundreds of 
miles, and suffered many hardships before 
he could learn the colors and habits of so 
many birds. He always said his love 
for birds began when his pet parrot was 
kiUed. 

It happened this way. 

One morning when John James was about 
four years old and his nurse was giving him 
his breakfast, the little parrot Mignonne, 
who said a lot of words as plainly as a child, 
asked for some bread and milk. A tame 
monkey who was in the room happened to 
be angry and sulking over something. He 
sprang at Mignonne, who screamed for help. 
Little John James shouted too, and begged 
his nurse to save the bird, but before any one 



100 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

could stop the ugly monkey's blows, the 
parrot was dead. 

The monkey was always kept chained after 
that, and John James buried his parrot in the 
garden and trimmed the grave with shrubs 
and flowering plants. But he missed his 
pet and so roamed through the woods ad- 
joining his father's estate, watching the birds 
that flew through them. By and by he did 
not care for anything so much as trying to 
make pictures of these birds, listening to their 
songs, finding what kind of nests they built, 
and at what time of year they flew north or 
south. 

John James lived in Nantes, France, when 
he was a small boy, although he was born in 
Louisiana. His father was a wealthy French 
gentleman, an officer in the French navy, 
and was much in America, so that John James 
was first in France and then in America until 
he was about twenty-five, at which time he 
settled in his native country for good. Few 
men have loved these United States better 
than he. 

John James did not care much for school. 



JOHN JAMES AUDUBON 101 

Figures tired his head. He loved music, 
drawing, and dancing. His father was away 
from home most of the time, and his pretty, 
young stepmother let the boy do quite as he 
pleased. She loved him dearly, and as he 
liked to roam through the country with boys 
of his age, she would pack luncheon baskets 
day after day for him, and when he came back 
at dusk, with the same baskets filled with 
birds' eggs, strange flowers, and all sorts of 
curiosities, she would sit down beside him and 
look them over, as interested as could be. 

Some years later, when John James's father 
put him in charge of a large farm near Phil- 
adelphia, the young man bought some fine 
horses, some well-trained dogs, and spent 
long summer days in hunting and fishing. 
He also got many breeds of fowl. It is a 
wonder that with all the leisure hours he had, 
and the large amount of spending money 
his father allowed him, he did not get into bad 
habits, but young Audubon ate mostly fruit 
and vegetables, never touched liquor, and 
chose good companions. He did like fine 
clothes and about this time dressed rather like 



102 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

a fop. I expect the handsome fellow made a 
pretty picture as he dashed by on his spirited 
black horse, in his satin breeches, silk stock- 
ings and pumps, and the fine, rujffled shirts 
which he had sent over from France. 

Anyway, a sweet young girl, Lucy Bake- 
well, lost her heart to him. Only as she was 
very young, her parents said she must not 
yet be married. And while he was waiting 
for her, he fixed over his house, and with a 
friend, Mr. Rozier, and a good-natured house- 
keeper, lived a simple, country life. You 
would have enjoyed a visit to him about this 
time. He turned the lower floor into a sort 
of museum. The walls were festooned with 
birds' eggs, which had been blown out and 
strung on thread. There were stuffed squir- 
rels, opossums, and racoons; and paintings 
of gorgeous colored birds hung everywhere. 
Audubon had great skill in training animals 
and one dog, Zephyr, did wonderful tricks. 

When Audubon and Lucy married, they 
went to Kentucky, where he and his friend 
Rozier opened a store. But Rozier did most 
of the store work, as Audubon was apt to 



JOHN JAMES AUDUBON 103 

wander off to the woods, for he had already 
decided to make this book about birds. His 
mind was not on his business, as you can see 
when I tell you that one day he mailed a letter 
with eight thousand dollars in it and never 
sealed it ! The only part of the business he 
enjoyed were the trips to New York and 
Philadelphia to buy goods. These goods 
were carried on the backs of pack horses, and 
a good part of the journeys led through for- 
ests. He lost the horses for a whole day once, 
because he heard a song-bird that was new to 
him, and as he followed the sound of the bird 
so as to get a sight of it, he forgot all about the 
pack horses and the goods. 

By and by his best friends said he acted 
like a crazy man. Only his wife and family 
stood by him. Finally when his money was 
gone, and there were two children growing 
up, things looked rather desperate. But 
Lucy, his wife, said : ''You are a genius, and 
you know more about birds than any one 
living. I am sure all you need is time to show 
the world how clever you are. I will earn 
money while you study and paint ! '^ 



104 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

So Audubon traveled to seek out the 
haunts of still more birds, while Lucy went 
as governess in rich families, or opened 
private schools where she could teach her 
own two boys as well as others. She earned 
a great deal of money, and when he had made 
all his pictures and was ready to publish the 
books, she had nearly enough to pay the ex- 
pense, and gave it to him. 

''No," he said, ''I am going to earn part of 
this myself. I will open a dancing class." 
He had danced beautifully ever since he was 
a child and could not understand how people 
could be so awkward and stupid as his class of 
sixty Kentuckians proved to be. In their 
first lesson he broke his bow and almost 
ruined his beautiful violin in his excitement 
and temper. ''Why, watch me," he cried, 
and he danced to his own music so charm- 
ingly that the class clapped their hands and 
said they would do their best to copy him. 
By and by they did better, and before he left 
them, they quite satisfied him. And what 
was fortunate for him, they had paid him two 
thousand dollars. With this and Lucy's earn- 



JOHN JAMES AUDUBON 105 

ings, he went to England and had the famous 
drawings published. When they were done, 
he exhibited them at the Royal Institute, 
charging admission, and earned many pounds 
more. 

Audubon was a lovable, courteous man, 
never too poor to help others, very modest 
and gracious. He adored his wife, and as 
his books (he wrote many volumes of his 
travels, which I hope you will read some day) 
brought in quite a fortune, the two, with their 
sons, and their grandchildren, spent their 
last days in great comfort, on a fine estate on 
the Hudson River. 



ROBERT FULTON 

When Robert Fulton was a little boy in 
Pennsylvania, he never minded being called 
to his lessons with his mother, for she was a 
famous Irish beauty, and Robert loved to 
look at her. She was good-natured too and 
told him far more interesting stories than he 
found in the lesson books. It was quite a 
different matter when Robert was sent, at the 
age of eight, to a school kept by Caleb John- 
son, a Quaker gentleman. 

With Mr. Johnson, Robert found lessons 
rather stupid affairs. He missed the stories 
his mother always wove in with the books 
they read together. Besides, Robert had 
taken some toys and old clocks to pieces, and 
he was busy planning how he could make some 
himself, if he but had the tools. Sometimes 
Caleb Johnson spoke to him two or three 
times before Robert heard him. The old 

106 



ROBERT FULTON 107 

Quaker thought the boy was wasting precious 
time, so he feruled him every day. 

This was way back, just before the Revo- 
lutionary War, and in those days every school- 
teacher kept a stout stick on his desk, called 
a ferule, with which to slap the naughty 
pupils' hands. The ferule always made the 
hand burn and sting, and if the teacher were 
harsh, he sometimes blistered a boy's hand. 
One time, after the Quaker had used the fer- 
ule on Robert until his own arm ached, he 
cried: ''There, that will make you do some- 
thing, I guess." 

"But," answered Robert, ''I came here, 
Sir, to have something beaten into my head, 
not into my knuckles." 

Robert was keener on making things than 
on learning lessons. One morning he did 
not get to the schoolhouse until nearly noon, 
and Mr. Johnson exclaimed: "Now, Mr. 
Tardy-Boy, where have you been? " 

"At Mr. Miller's shop, pounding out a lead 
for my pencil. I want you to look at it. It 
is the best one I ever had ! " And the teacher 
had to admit that he never saw a better one. 



108 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

Another time Robert told the Quaker 
teacher that he was so busy thinking up new 
ideas that he did not have any room in his 
mind for storing away what was in dusty 
books ! 

Robert loved pictures. There was a large 
portrait of his beautiful mother, painted by 
Benjamin West, which hung in the parlor, 
and he had often wished to try and make one 
like it. He had not been long at school before 
a seat-mate brought to school some paints 
and brushes belonging to an older brother. 
As the war was waging, the people had hard 
work to get luxuries or money to buy them 
with, so Robert quite envied the boy such a 
prize. He begged to try them, and he made 
such wonderful pictures, pictures so much 
better than any one else in school could make, 
that the owner gave the whole outfit to him. 

About this time Robert was always buying 
little packages of quicksilver. He was trying 
experiments with it, but he wouldn't tell the 
other boys what they were. So they nick- 
named him '^ Quicksilver Bob." Of course, 
the men in shops where firearms were made 



ROBERT FULTON 109 

and repaired were very busy. "Quicksilver 
Bob" went to these shops every day. The 
men liked him, and as he talked with them, 
he often made suggestions that they were 
glad to follow. "That boy will do something 
big some of these days," they would say to 
each other. 

When Robert was fourteen, he met a boy 
who worked in a machine shop, by the 
name of Christopher Grumpf. This boy was 
eighteen, and his father was a fine fisherman 
who knew where the largest number of fish 
could be caught, and he took the two boys 
up and down the river in a flat-bottomed 
boat that was pushed along by the means 
of two long poles. The boat was clumsy, and 
this poling made the boys' arms ache. Robert 
kept thinking there must be a better way of 
getting that boat through the water. He 
went away to visit his aunt but worked all 
the time on a set of paddles and the model 
of a boat on which they could be built. He 
tried a set of these paddles on Mr. Grumpf's 
boat when he got home, and they worked so 
well that Mr. Grumpf never used the poles 



110 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

again on his fishing trips. He found the pad- 
dles saved him from having lame muscles. 

Robert and his playmates had fine times 
watching the two thousand troops stationed 
in Lancaster. These were British prisoners. 
Some of them were kept in the barracks, the 
officers lodged in private houses, and the 
Hessian troops (some of whom had their 
wives with them) lived in square huts of mud 
and sod. This colony of Hessians greatly 
interested the boys of the village, and Robert 
drew capital pictures of them, for he had 
been practising sketching and painting all his 
spare time. In fact, he decided, at the age 
of seventeen, to go to the city of Philadelphia 
and make a business of painting portraits and 
miniatures. For four years he lived there, 
earning a good deal of money and sending 
the greater part of it home to his mother. 

Among the many pleasant friends he made 
in Philadelphia was Benjamin Franklin. Mr. 
Franklin and most of his wealthy patrons 
advised Robert to go to Europe and take 
painting lessons of Benjamin West. Before 
he went, Robert bought a farm for his 



ROBERT FULTON 111 

mother and sisters. He never forgot to see 
that his mother was comfortable. 

Robert had been thinking for years how 
fine it would be if boats did not have to de- 
pend on sails but could be sent through the 
water by steam. Over in Europe he met a 
lord who was making plans for canals, and 
while talking with him he grew more inter- 
ested than ever in ways of traveling by water. 
So although he painted enough portraits 
to lay away money for a rainy day, he studied 
all the rules for building canals and about 
the machinery that goes in boats. Certainly 
he was busier than when, as a boy, he told 
Caleb Johnson there was no time for dusty 
books when his mind was holding so many 
new ideas, for he learned three or four 
languages, invented the first panorama ever 
shown in France, a machine for cutting marble, 
another for twisting rope, and a torpedo boat 
to be used in warfare. 

Only you must not think that because he 
had so many clever notions about the imple- 
ments of war he believed in nations killing 
each other off — no, indeed. He stood for 



112 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

peace more than a hundred and fifty years 
ago, before there was so much said and done 
to encourage it. He said: ''The art of 
Peace should be the study of every young 
American!" 

He stayed seven years in France and was 
pointed out wherever he went as ''that tal- 
ented young foreigner." He lived most of 
the time with an American gentleman, Mr. 
Joel Barlow, and his wife. They were very 
fond of Fulton and believed that the experi- 
ments he was trying, — to make vessels go 
by steam, would prove a success. They 
nicknamed him "Toot," because every eve- 
ning, in his room, he was running a tiny model 
of a steam-engine across his work table, which 
gave shrill whistles now and then. 

For as much as thirty years men in Europe 
and America had been trying to make vessels 
run by steam when Fulton finally succeeded in 
doing it. He built a boat which was fitted 
with a steam-engine and gave it a trial on the 
river Seine. Something broke, which let the 
vessel down on to the river's bottom, but 
Fulton soon had another puffing its way up 



ROBERT FULTON 113 

and down a section of the Seine, while the 
people on the banks cheered and wondered. 

Fulton returned to America and built a 
steamer which he intended to run on the 
Hudson River. He named it the Clermont, 
but it was generally spoken of as ''Fulton's 
Folly" by the crowds who watched its build- 
ing. The loungers who stood about jeering 
at the inventor were so disrespectful as they 
watched the last few days' woick that Fulton 
feared they would smash it in pieces and hired 
a guard to protect it. 

It was four years after Fulton had shown 
the model boat on the Seine, in France, that 
he started the Clermont up the Hudson River, 
in his own country. There were not thirty 
people in New York city who believed the 
steamer would go a mile in an hour. A few 
friends went aboard with the inventor, to 
make the trial trip, but they looked fright- 
ened and worried. The Clermont was a clumsy 
affair; its machinery creaked and groaned; 
no whistle seemed to work, so a horn was 
blown whenever the boat approached a land- 
ing. The crew carried on enough wood at 



114 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

each landing to last till they reached another. 
This wood was pine, and whenever the engi- 
neer stirred the coals, a lot of sparks flew into 
the air, and black smoke poured from the 
funnel. The crews on the ordinary sailing 
vessels were afraid of this strange craft that 
went chugging by them, and some of the 
sailors were in such a panic that they left 
their vessels and ran into the woods, de- 
claring there was a horrible monster afloat 
on the water. 

Well, the Clermont proved a great conve- 
nience on the Hudson River. It ran as a 
packet boat for years, and Fulton built other 
steamers. He realized that it would mean 
a great deal to America if some quick, cheap 
method of carrying people and freight along 
the great Missouri and Mississippi rivers 
could be used. His invention of the steam- 
boat has given him the name of the '' Father 
of Steam Navigation," and it has been a bless- 
ing to the whole world. 

Besides being a wonderful inventor, Robert 
Fulton was a polished gentleman. He was 
tall and handsome, like his mother, as gentle 



ROBERT FULTON 115 

as a child, and he had a charming way of talk- 
ing, so whether he spoke of America, France, 
steamboats, or pictures, there was always 
silence in the room. 

Think of the old Quaker teacher, Caleb 
Johnson, trying to ferule a few ideas into 
Robert Fulton's head ! No doubt Mr. John- 
son was worried, but Robert's head proved 
to be an uncommonly wise one. 



GEORGE PEABODY 

It was quite a while before you and I were 
born that a boy by the name of George Pea- 
body lived in Dan vers, Massachusetts. He 
had such good lessons in school that his 
teachers rather thought he would go to col- 
lege, but one day he took his books out of 
his desk and said he must leave school and go 
to work, because his mother was very poor. 
The teacher said : ''We shall miss you, George, 
and hope you will have much good luck!" 

George was only eleven when this happened. 
He was a round-faced, plucky, little fellow, 
with the good manners that generally go 
with a kind heart, and there wasn't a lazy 
bone in his body. Mr. Proctor, the grocer, 
thought he was just the kind of a boy he 
needed in his store. So he hired him. 

Right away the housekeepers in Danvers 
agreed that George Peabody was the nicest 
grocer-boy they ever saw. They said to each 

116 



GEORGE PEABODY 117 

other it was worth the walk to the store to 
have him hand out their packages with his 
sunny smile, his pleasant words, and polite 
bow. When he carried the heavier things, 
like a bag of meal, or a gallon of molasses 
home for them, they would coax him to rest 
awhile and eat some fruit or cake. They all 
liked to talk with him. 

George stayed with Mr. Proctor four years. 
Then he went to Vermont to help his grand- 
father. Mr. Proctor almost cried when he 
saw the big stage-coach rattle away in a cloud 
of dust, while the boy who had been so faith- 
ful to his duties waved good-by with his hand- 
kerchief as long as he could see. 

When George was sixteen, he joined his 
brother David, who had a store in New- 
bury port. The young people in this old sea- 
port town made friends with him at once. 
They asked him to every fishing-party and 
picnic they had, but he was usually too busy 
to go, for besides selling goods all day, he often 
wrote cards in a clear, neat hand, in his room 
evenings. He spent almost nothing on him- 
self, but was as happy as could be when his 



118 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

letters to his mother held more, money than 
usual. His being poor did not matter. The 
rich boys in Newburyport were glad to pay 
his share in games and excursions any time 
he could take a holiday, just for the sake of 
having his lively company. 

A fire destroyed David's store, and George 
had to make a fresh start in Georgetown. 
It was the same story there. It was no time 
at all before the mayor of Georgetown said 
to the doctor and the minister: "I tell you, 
George Peabody is a comfortable person to 
have round !" 

At twenty George did not have a dollar of 
his own, but after the fire plenty of men 
offered to lend him money, and he kept on 
working in his happy way until he was thirty- 
five, when he found himself rich enough to 
go to London and not only have stores but to 
open a bank, too. Then Englishmen began 
to find out what a comfortable man George 
Peabody was to have round. He had no wife 
and lived rather simply himself, but was glad 
to spend a great deal on other folks. He 
found the working men lived in filthy, un- 



GEORGE PEABODY 119 

healthy places, so he built a great square — 
almost a little village — of neat, pretty, 
working men's homes. (In his will he left 
the poor of London half a million dollars.) 
Then, when it was feared that Sir John Frank- 
lin, the great arctic explorer, was lost, and there 
was need to send men to search for him, 
George Peabody said: "Let me help — I'll 
fit out a ship, " and he paid for everything 
that went aboard the Advance. You under- 
stand, now, why you find on the geography 
maps a point, way up north, called Peabody's 
Land ! 

The Englishmen took a strong liking to 
this sociable American who had settled among 
them, and it was thought a great treat to go 
round to his rooms in the evening and have 
a game of backgammon or whist after a jolly 
dinner, at which Mr. Peabody always told 
funny stories. He had a fine memory and a 
real gift for story-telling. He loved music 
and was delighted when people would sing 
Scotch songs for him. 

Living in England many years did not make 
Mr. Peabody love America any the less. 



120 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

When the great Crystal Palace was built in 
which to hold a sort of World's Fair, there 
were to be shown samples of things made by 
different countries. The papers were full of 
talk about this grand affair. One morning 
Mr. Peabody opened his paper at the break- 
fast table and read an article which ridiculed 
the looks of the rooms or stalls set apart for 
American products. I tell you it did not take 
him long to eat his breakfast. He said : 
''I guess I'll see about this. I guess my own 
country is not going to be made fun of!" 
He did not abuse the man who wrote the 
article, but he went right to the Crystal Palace 
to find out how our things did look. He 
knew the minute he got there that our agents 
did not have money enough to work with. 
So he just opened his purse and wrote letters 
and offered advice, until in the end the Ameri- 
can stalls were decorated in exquisite taste, 
and when there were such things shown as 
Powers 's "Greek Slave" (a wonderful statue), 
the very useful reaping machine of McCor- 
mack's, Colt's revolvers, and the printing 
press of Hoe, with many other interesting 



GEORGE PEABODY 121 

things, the visitors to the fair agreed that few 
countries had more to their credit than Amer- 
ica. Then the English papers behaved very 
handsomely and spoke so well of our exhibit 
that I expect if George Peabody read the last 
article at his breakfast table, he may have 
chuckled to himself and said: ''I'll risk 
America every time V 

He noticed, while at the fair, how well the 
Crystal Palace was suited for large gatherings (it 
is mostly of iron and glass — with two immense, 
glittering towers) and decided he would give 
a big dinner on the Fourth of July to all the 
Americans in London. This dinner proved a 
grand affair. The Duke of Wellington and 
many famous English people were present. 
It was such a success that ever after, as long 
as he lived, George Peabody gave a Fourth 
of July dinner in Crystal Palace. 

Queen Victoria so deeply esteemed Mr. 
Peabody that she sent a message to him that 
she wished to make him a baronet, and confer 
the Order of the Bath upon him. And what 
word do you suppose he sent back? Why, 
he said : "I am going over to America pretty 



122 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

soon to visit the town where I was born, and 
as I do not care one bit about titles and such 
things, but do value your interest and friend- 
ship, I wish you would just write me a letter 
which I may read to my friends in America, 
who love you as I do ! " The queen wrote a 
long, affectionate letter to him, saying what a 
blessing he had been to England, and asked 
him to accept her portrait. 

So when Danvers, a part of which had 
been set off into a new town by itself and 
named Peabody (for the faithful grocer boy, 
who had become the rich banker) was to have 
its hundredth birthday, George Peabody 
crossed the ocean to be there. He gave to 
his native town a free library and lecture 
hall and the portrait of Queen Victoria. This 
miniature was so set with gold and jewels as 
to cost fifty thousand dollars ! The queen's 
letter is kept there to this day. 

Mr. Peabody gave money for museums at 
Yale and Harvard, an Academy of Science 
at Salem, a memorial church at Georgetown, 
the birthplace of his mother, and large sums 
of money for schools in the South, because he 



GEORGE PEABODY 123 

realized that after the Civil War there would 
be much disorder and poverty. Some men 
could not have kept perfectly friendly with 
two countries, but Mr. Peabody loved both 
England and America and in all he did and 
said tried to bind the two nations together. 
The very last time he spoke in public was at 
the National Peace Jubilee in Boston. 

When George Peabody died, the queen 
wanted him buried in Westminster Abbey, 
and when she found he had left a request to 
be taken to America, she sent a ship, the 
Monarch, across the Atlantic Ocean with his 
body. 

A good many lives and stories have been 
written about George Peabody, and he has 
earned several names like The Great Philan- 
thropist — The Merchant Prince — the Am- 
bassador of Peace — the Friend of the Poor — 
and so forth, but none fit him any better than 
the saying: "He was a comfortable man to 
have round!" 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

Before New England became such a busy, 
hurried sort of a place — say a hundred years 
ago — its men and women had time to listen 
to sermons that were more than an hour 
long, or to lecturers who talked three or four 
hours. When a public speaker used very 
fine words and could keep the people who 
listened to him wide awake and eager to hear 
more, he was called a great orator. An ora- 
tor who dazzled our grandfathers and grand- 
mothers was named Daniel Webster. He 
has been dead a long time, but the public 
speeches he made will never be forgotten. 

Down in the business part of Boston can 
be seen, on a large building, a tablet which 
reads "The Home of Daniel Webster." On 
the terraced lawn of Massachusetts' State- 
house stands a bronze statue of Daniel Web- 
ster. And in old Faneuil Hall, Boston (which 
is called the Cradle of Liberty), there is a 

124: 



DANIEL WEBSTER 125 

huge painting, as long as — well — as long 
as a street-car, which is called "Webster's 
Reply to Hayne." In this picture there are the 
portraits of one hundred and thirty senators 
and other men, but all of them are watching 
Daniel Webster. This is a picture well worth 
seeing, and Webster was well worth hearing. 

Daniel Webster was born in New Hamp- 
shire. When he was a year old, his parents 
moved onto a farm which they called "The 
Elms" on account of the fine old trees which 
grew there. The older Webster boys did 
all kinds of heavy work, but as Daniel was not 
very strong, he was petted, and as he grew 
up, was asked to do only very light work. 
He rode the plow horse in the fields, drove 
the cows to pasture, and tended logs in his 
father's sawmill. When he was sent to do 
this last, he always took a book along, be- 
cause it took twenty minutes for the saw to 
work its teeth through one of the tree-trunks, 
and he could not bear to waste all that time. 
He learned to read from his mother and sister 
almost as soon as he could talk, and he pored 
over the Bible for hours at a time. 



126 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

Daniel's father kept a tavern, besides carry- 
ing on his farm. The teamsters who got 
their dinners there used to ask Daniel to 
read to them. His voice was deep and musi- 
cal, and he gave such meaning to the words 
of the Bible that they thought him a wonder. 
His eyes were like black velvet, and his hair 
was as black and shiny as the feathers of a 
crow. Every one called him ''little black 
Dan." 

Daniel read everything he could find, and 
could recite whole poems and chapters of 
books when he was quite small. At a country 
store, just across the road from his father's 
tavern, he bought a cotton pocket-handker- 
chief on which the Constitution of the United 
States was printed. After looking at the 
eagles and flags which were printed as a bor- 
der, he sat down under one of the giant elm 
trees and learned by heart every word printed 
there. 

Daniel liked to wander along the banks of 
the Merrimac River, and as he played in the 
fields and woods, he learned a great deal about 
animals and plants. Robert Wise taught 



DANIEL WEBSTER 127 

him to fish for the salmon and shad that were 
plenty about there. Robert Wise was an 
old English sailor, who lived with his wife 
in a cottage on the Webster farm. He told 
Daniel famous stories of the strange countries 
he had sailed to. This man could not read, 
so he felt well repaid for carrying little black 
Dan on his shoulder, or paddling him up and 
down streams half a day at a time, if the boy 
would go after supper to his cottage and read 
aloud to him from books or newspapers. 

Daniel loved all outdoor beauty, the sun, 
moon, and stars, the ocean, and the wind. 
In almost every one of the great speeches 
that he made, as a middle-aged, or old man, he 
mentioned them. 

In the state of New Hampshire, when 
Daniel was a boy, teachers and schools were 
scarce. A man or a woman would teach 
a few weeks in one town and then move on 
to another. They were called traveling 
teachers. This was done because there were 
not anywhere near enough teachers to go 
round, and it was thought only fair that each 
little village or town should get its few weeks. 



128 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

Daniel followed these traveling teachers a 
long time every year, sometimes walking 
two or three miles a day, at other times 
boarding away from home. Nothing was 
taught in these schools but reading and 
writing. Daniel was an almost perfect reader 
but a poor writer. 

One of Daniel's teachers wanted his pupils 
to know good poems and chapters of books 
by heart. He offered a prize — a jack-knife — 
to the one who should learn the most verses 
from the Bible. One after another was 
called upon to recite. They had found it 
rather hard, and many of them had learned 
but eight or ten verses at the most. When 
it was Daniel's turn, he recited chapter after 
chapter. He kept on and on until it was time 
for the teacher to dismiss school. Mr. Tappan 
said: ''Well, there is no doubt you deserve 
the prize. How many more chapters did you 
learn?" 

''Oh, a lot more," answered Dan, laughing. 

After Daniel was twelve, he began to grow 
stronger and did his share of work on the 
farm. One day when he was helping his 



.•-^' '^ym-^'mmw: 




He rode there on horseback. Page 129. 



DANIEL WEBSTER 129 

father in the hayfield, Mr. Webster said : 
"Daniel, it is the men who have fine educa- 
tions that succeed in this world. I do not 
intend that you shall be a drudge all your 
days. I am going to send you through col- 
lege." 

Daniel was so pleased at this that he sat 
right down on the hay and cried. 

When Daniel was fitting for college at 
Exeter, he was about the brightest pupil 
there, but it did seem funny that the boy who 
was to one day be a great orator could not 
then declaim or recite before the school. 
He would learn the nicest pieces and practise 
them in his own room, but when he stood up 
before all the scholars and teachers, his cour- 
age left him. Sometimes, when his name was 
called, he could not rise from his seat. He 
was very much ashamed of himself and shed 
a good many tears over his shyness. But he 
persevered and finally did better than any 
of the boys. There is nothing like trying 
things enough times. 

When Daniel went to Dartmouth College, 
he rode there on horseback, carrying his 



130 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

feather-bed, blankets, clothes, and books on 
his horse. He was still such a dark looking 
person that the students thought he was an 
Indian. 

Daniel studied law and made very fine 
pleas in the courtrooms. He was a senator 
in Congress, a secretary of state, and a public 
speaker who was admired in England as well 
as in America. 

Mr. Webster had a wife and children. He 
bought a large estate at Marshfield in Mas- 
sachusetts, where the family spent many 
summers. He loved children and animals, 
was kind to the poor, and bought the freedom 
of several slaves. He was very neat in dress. 
His favorite costume for court and senate 
was a blue coat with brass buttons, a buff 
waistcoat, and black trousers. 

Daniel Webster always liked to look up old 
friends and was never cold or haughty to 
any one. Once when he was going through 
the West, making famous speeches in the 
different cities, a man crowded forward to 
speak to him, saying: ''Why, is this little 
black Dan that used to water my horses?" 



DANIEL WEBSTER 131 

The dignified orator did not mind a bit. 
"Yes," he laughed, '^'m Uttle black Dan 
grown up!" 

Daniel was a good son to the father, who 
had tried hard to make him a fine scholar. 
Only once did he disappoint him. That 
was when he refused to be clerk of court. 
When his father begged him to take that place, 
he said: "No, father, I am going to use my 
tongue in courts, not my pen. I mean to 
be an orator!" He proved to be one of 
America's great ones. 



AUGUSTUS ST. GAUDENS 

Augustus St. Gaudens was a sculptor. 
He made wonderful figures of our American 
heroes. No matter how often we are told of 
the brave deeds of Lincoln, Sherman, Shaw, 
and Farragut, we shall remember these men 
longer because of St. Gaudens's statues of 
them. 

Although Augustus was the son of a French 
shoemaker, named Bernard Paul St. Gaudens, 
and a young Irish girl of Dublin, who lost her 
heart to Bernard as she sat binding slippers 
in the same shop where he made shoes, we call 
him an American, for a great famine swept 
Ireland when little Augustus was only six 
months old, and the young parents sailed to 
America with all haste. They landed in 
Boston, where the mother and baby waited 
for the father to find work in New York. 
He soon sent for them, and as Augustus and 
his two brothers grew up in that city and 

132 



AUGUSTUS ST. GAUDENS 133 

always lived in this country, he seems to be- 
long to us. 

Shoemakers, as a rule, are not rich men, 
and Mr. St. Gaudens did not pay very strict 
attention to his work, for he joined so many 
societies and clubs that these took his time. 
His patrons would never have had their shoes 
made or mended if he had not hired help. 
Then, also, his sons learned to cobble shoes 
very young. 

Before Augustus went into his father's 
shop to work, and when he had a good many 
hours out of school, he found the busy streets 
of New York exciting enough. He was laugh- 
ing and merry, so that he made friends from 
the Bowery to Central Park. He had only 
to sniff hungrily at the bakery to have the 
good-natured German cook toss him out 
brown sugar-cakes, and if he fell off the 
wharves, or ran too near big fire-engines, some 
kind policeman rescued him. He was not a 
bad boy. Probably the worst thing he did 
was to join some other boys in the string 
joke. They used to tie strings from the seats 
of the bakery-wagons to the posts of high 



134 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

stoops and watch these strings knock off hats 
as men hurried by. 

Sundays were gala days. If the sun shone, 
all the boys in the neighborhood went over 
to New Jersey on the ferry-boat. Augustus's 
father always gave him and his brothers five 
cents each. Two cents took a bo^/^ over to 
New Jersey, two cents brought him back, 
and there was the other cent for candy or 
gum. It was good sport to chase each other 
through the green fields, hunt birds' nests, 
and climb trees, but the best fun came on the 
way back, when the boys sat in a long row 
at the front of the boat, letting their legs 
dangle over the edge, watching the life on the 
river. 

When Augustus went to school, at the 
age of ten, he did more drawing on his slate 
than arithmetic. How the pupils craned 
their necks to see his pictures! He did 
not draw just one man, a bird, or a single 
house, but whole armies shooting guns and 
cannon. These soldiers looked alive. On 
his way home, Augustus was apt to draw 
charcoal sketches on every white house he 



AUGUSTUS ST. GAUDENS 135 

passed. The sketches were fine, but the 
housekeepers scolded. Few people noticed 
the real talent of the boy, but one old doctor 
became much excited and urged Augustus's 
father to let him study art. His father had 
seen very lifelike pictures of his own work- 
shop and cobblers which Augustus had drawn, 
and agreed that he would do what he could to 
help him. Only Augustus must for a few 
more years earn money for the family. So 
while he went to a night school for drawing 
lessons, he cut cameos through the day. 

My, but the man who taught him cameo 
cutting was cross ! Augustus was scolded 
and driven to work faster all day long. 

In spite of the terrible rages into which this 
stonecutter would go, he was very artistic, 
and Augustus learned how to cut wonderful 
heads of dogs, horses, and lions, for scarf 
pins. He made hundreds of lions' heads^ 
and twenty years later, when he was helping 
his brother model the lion figures for the 
Boston Public Library, his hands fairly flew, 
he knew all the lines so well. 

When Augustus went in the evenings to 



136 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

the drawing classes at Cooper Union, he be- 
gan drawing human figures and was so eager 
about his art that he would have forgotten 
to eat or sleep if his mother had not watched 
him. As he grew older, he loved art more and 
more. The only thing else that attracted 
his eye was the city-full of soldiers, at the 
beginning of the Civil War. He read the 
bulletin boards, heard groups of men telling 
about battles, and his heart ached with love 
for America. He wanted to go to war to 
show that love. But his father was now 
sure that Augustus was a genius and insisted 
upon his going to Europe to study. The 
father could not give him much money, 
hardly more than enough to get him across 
the ocean, but he could cut cameos to pay 
for his lessons. 

Augustus stayed in Paris a year. He made 
friends among the artists just as he had 
made them when a child in New York. Then 
he worked four years in Rome. He had a 
hard time there and grew thin for want of 
food and sleep, but he was as eager as ever 
and worked faster and harder than before. 



AUGUSTUS ST. GAUDENS 137 

People began to visit his studio and always 
went away full of praise for the talented 
young man. Rich Americans visiting in Rome 
urged him to return to this country. They 
gave him orders, and he finally came back 
to America, where he was kept busy on busts 
and medallions until he began to have orders 
for monuments of great Americans. This 
was work he liked. He loved America, and 
he was proud of her heroes. Perhaps he loved 
Abraham Lincoln best of all. He had seen 
Lincoln a good many times, and he had read 
and studied about his beautiful life until every 
line of that man's face and figure was clear 
in his mind. Still, when he was asked to 
make a statue of Lincoln for the city of Chi- 
cago, he worked on it many years. On his 
statue of General Sherman which stands in 
Central Park, New York, he labored eleven 
years. On the beautiful Robert Gould Shaw 
monument which stands in front of the State 
House in Boston, he spent twelve years. 
This does not mean that he stood with clay 
in his hands all this time, but that from the 
time he began to plan what he would draw 



138 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

into the statue, what size it ought to be, 
and whether the man should be standing or 
sitting, until it stood all finished, he thought 
and worked a long, long time. His work is 
almost perfect, and fine work always takes 
time and patience. 

When busy on the Gould Shaw monument, 
St. Gaudens often stood on a scaffolding ten 
hours at a time in the hottest summer days, 
not eating anything but an apple. He was 
so eager over his work that he did not want to 
lose a minute. But he had some fun as well. 
The horse he used as a model used to get 
terribly tired of standing so long and would 
snort and prance and paw the ground until 
it took several men to hold him. And some 
of the negroes who posed nearly fainted when 
they saw St. Gaudens make faces that looked 
exactly like them with just a few pinches of 
his fingers on the soft clay. They thought 
he was in league with Satan, they said. 
When you see this monument, you will notice 
how brave Colonel Shaw looks, riding on his 
large horse, and how eagerly the colored troops 
march behind him. 



AUGUSTUS ST. GAUDENS 139 

St. Gaudens was very fond of Phillips 
Brooks, the good Bishop, and because of their 
friendship, his statue of Brooks at Trinity 
Church, Boston, is so like the man that you 
almost expect to hear him speak, as you stand 
before it. St. Gaudens had been to concerts 
with Bishop Brooks, had heard him preach, 
had seen him merry and sad, knew how un- 
selfish he was, and how much he liked to cheer 
people up, and somehow managed to make 
his statue tell us all these traits. There is 
no doubt St. Gaudens was one of the world's 
great sculptors, but he would never have been 
great if he had not loved his art so well that 
he could go hungry, cold, and tired year after 
year for the sake of learning it. And he was 
great because he was so determined to do his 
work over and over again until he felt it was 
just right. He always urged students to do 
the same. " You can do anything you please," 
he often said; ''it's the way it's done that 
makes the difference." 

Besides becoming famous, the shoemaker's 
son was happy and rich in the end. He had 
a wife and a son who, among other books, 



140 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

has written a life of his father. From this 
book and by the stories St. Gaudens's friends 
tell of him, we know that the sculptor was 
a gentle, loving man who tried to help the 
world to be better and wiser. It will not 
matter whether it is the statue of Sherman, 
Logan, Lincoln, or Shaw by St. Gaudens 
that you are fortunate enough to see ; it will 
be the way any piece of his is done which 
makes it so beautiful, and which makes 
Americans glad that almost every bit of his 
work has stayed in this country. 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 

Concord, Massachusetts, is one of the 
New England towns that everybody likes to 
visit. When tourists reach Boston they usu- 
ally make a point of going to Concord, either 
by electrics or steam train, because they have 
read about its famous battle ground, where 
the first British soldiers fell in the great 
Revolutionary War, and because they want 
to see the very house in which Louisa May 
Alcott wrote Little Women, and the homes of 
Hawthorne, Emerson, and Thoreau. 

Henry Thoreau, who was born in Concord, 
loved the town so well that he spent most of 
his life tramping through its fields and forests. 
You might say the business of his life was 
walking, for he never had any real profession, 
and he walked from four to eight hours a 
day — across lots, too. He used to say roads 
were made for horses and business men. 
"Why, what would become of us," he would 

141 



142 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

ask, "if we walked only in a garden or a mall? 
What should we see?" 

When Mr. Thoreau started out for a long 
saunter in the woods, he wore a wide-brimmed 
straw hat, stout shoes, and strong gray trousers 
that would not show spots too easily, and 
would stand tree-climbing. Under his arm 
he usually carried an old music book in which 
to press plants, and in his pocket he kept a 
pencil, his diary, a microscope, a jack-knife, 
and a ball of twine. He and a friend, William 
EUery Channing, agreed that a week's camp- 
ing was more fun than all the books in the 
world. Once they tried tramping and camp- 
ing in Canada. They wore overalls most 
of the time, and wishing not to be bothered 
with trunks or suitcases, they tied a few 
changes of clothing in bundles, and each man 
took an umbrella. They called themselves 
"Knights of the Umbrella and Bundle." 

The Thoreaus were rather a prominent 
family in Concord. There were six of them, 
all told. The father, Mr. John Thoreau, was 
a pencil-maker. A hundred years ago this 
was a trade that brought good money. Mr. 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 143 

Thoreau could turn out a great many 
pencils because all the children helped him 
make them. He was a small man, quite 
deaf, and very shy. He did not talk much. 
But his wife, Mrs. Cynthia Thoreau, who was 
half a head taller than he, could, and did, 
talk enough for both. She was handsome, 
wide-awake, and had a strong, sweet, singing 
voice. She took part in all the merry-makings 
and also in all the church affairs iii Concord. 
She was bitter against slavery. She used to 
call meetings at her house to talk over ways 
of putting an end to it, and when slaves ran 
away from the South, she often hid them in 
her home and helped them get further away. 
She knew a great deal about nature, bought 
a good many books for her children, and was 
determined that they should have good edu- 
cations. Henry, his brother John, and the 
two sisters, Helen and Sophia, all taught 
school. And Helen helped Henry earn money 
to go to Harvard College. 

The whole Thoreau family were proud of 
Henry, and his mother never tired of telling 
what fine letters and essays he could write. 



144 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

She and Sophia went one day to call on 
an aunt of Ralph Waldo Emerson's, Miss 
Mary Emerson, who was eighty-four. Mrs. 
Thoreau began to talk about Henry right 
away. Miss Emerson nodded her head and 
said: "Very true," now and then, but kept 
her eyes shut every minute her callers stayed. 
When they rose to go. Miss Emerson said : 
''Perhaps you noticed, Mrs. Thoreau, that I 
kept my eyes closed during your call. I did 
so because I did not wish to look on the 
ribbons you are wearing — so unsuitable for 
a child of God and a woman of your years !" 
Poor Mrs. Thoreau was seventy, and her 
bonnet was as bright and gay as it had been 
possible to buy, for she loved rich colors 
and silks and velvets. She did not mind Miss 
Emerson's rebuke a bit, but Sophia stuffed 
her handkerchief in her mouth to keep from 
laughing aloud. 

When Henry was a boy, he used to delight 
in his Uncle Charles Dunbar, who paid the 
family a visit every year. Mr. Dunbar 
was not a worker like his sister, Cynthia 
Thoreau. He did not have any business but 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 145 

drifted about the country, living by his wits. 
One of his favorite tricks was to pretend to 
swallow all the knives and forks, and a plate 
or two, at a tavern, and offer to give them 
back if the landlord would not charge for his 
dinner. He was a great wrestler and could 
do sleight-of-hand tricks. Henry used to 
watch him and ask question after question, 
and he learned how to do a few tricks himself. 

Just as his mother hoped, when Henry grew 
up, he decided to be a writer. To be sure he 
taught school a while and gave lectures which 
people did not understand very well, for he 
had strange ideas for those times, but he 
wrote page after page, sitting in the woods, 
and liked that better than all else. He first 
wrote an account of a week's trip on the 
Concord and Merrimac rivers. This book 
did not sell very well, and one time he carried 
home from the publishers seven hundred 
copies that no one would buy, saying : "Well, 
I have quite a respectably sized library now — 
all my own writing, too!" 

But four or five years later Thoreau built 
a hut on the shore of Walden Pond and 



146 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

lived there all alone, like a hermit, for two 
years. He did this for two reasons : because 
he wanted to prove that people spend too 
much time and money on food and clothes 
and because he wanted a perfectly quiet 
chance, with no neighbors running in, to 
write more books. He said he spent but one 
hundred dollars a year while he lived in this 
hut. He raised beans on his land, ate wild 
berries, caught fish — and ''went visiting" 
now and then. I should not wonder if he 
often took a second helping of food, when 
visiting. To buy his woodsman's clothes 
and a few necessities, he planted gardens, 
painted houses, and cut wood for his friends. 
He wrote a book called Walden which tells 
all about these seven or eight hundred days 
he went a-hermiting, and after that, several 
other books. These sold very well. In all 
of them he was rather fond of boasting that 
he had found the only sensible way to live. 
''I am for simple living," he would say, and 
always was declaring ''I love to be ALONE !" 
But sometimes people passing by the pond 
used to hear him whistling old ballads, or 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 147 

playing very softly and beautifully on a flute, 
and they thought he sounded lonely. Al- 
though he makes you feel, when you read his 
books, that it is fine to roam the fields, 
sniffing the wild grape and the yellow violets, 
and that no one can find pleasure like the man 
who rows, and skates, and swims, and tills 
the soil, yet the question is bound to come : 
"/s a man all alone in a hut any better off 
than a jolly father in a big house, playing 
games with his children?" 

Let me tell you, too, that after all Thoreau's 
talk about wanting to be alone, the last year 
he lived in the hut, he used to steal off, just 
at twilight, to a neighbor's house where there 
were little children. While they curled up 
on a rug, in front of the open fire, he would 
draw near in a big rocking-chair and sit for 
an hour or more telling them stories of his 
childhood. He would pop corn, make whistles 
for them with his jack-knife, or, best of all, 
do some of the juggling tricks, which he had 
learned, as a boy, from his uncle Charles. 
And one day he appeared at the door with a 
hay-rack to give them a ride. He had covered 



148 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

the bottom of the rack with deep hay, then 
spread a buffalo robe over the hay to make it 
comfortable. He sat on a board placed across 
the front and drove the span of horses, and 
as he drove, he told funny stories and sang 
songs till the children thought a hermit was 
a pretty good sort of a chum. 

The hut went to pieces years ago, and only 
a pile of stones marks the place where it stood, 
but if you go to Concord, you will find a pleas- 
ant street named for Thoreau, and the house in 
which he lived the last twelve years of his 
life, half hidden by tall trees. And also 
you can read his books and learn how he 
enjoyed the woods and what beautiful things 
he found in them. 



LOUISA MAY ALCOTT 

As much as seventy years ago, in the city 
of Boston, there lived a small girl who had 
the naughty habit of running away. On a 
certain April morning, almost as soon as her 
mother finished buttoning her dress, Louisa 
May Alcott slipped out of the house and up 
the street as fast as her feet could carry her. 

Louisa crept through a narrow alley and 
crossed several streets. It was a beautiful 
day, and she did not care so very much just 
where she went so long as she was having 
an adventure, all by herself. Suddenly she 
came upon some children who said they were 
going to a nice, tall ash heap to play. They 
asked her to join them. 

Louisa thought they were fine playmates, 
for when she grew hungry they shared some 
cold potatoes and bread crusts with her. 
She would not have thought this much of a 
lunch in her mother's dining-room, but for an 
outdoor picnic it did very well. 

149 



150 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

When she tired of the ash heap she bade the 
children good-by, thanked them for their 
kindness, and hop-skipped to the Common, 
where she must have wandered about for 
hours, because, all of a sudden, it began to 
grow dark. Then she wanted to get home. 
She wanted her doll, her kitty, and her 
mother! It frightened her when she could 
not find any street that looked natural. 
She was hungry and tired, too. She threw 
herself down on some door-steps to rest and 
to watch the lamplighter, for you must re- 
member this was long before there was any 
gas or electricity in Boston. At this moment 
a big dog came along. He kissed her face 
and hands and then sat down beside her with 
a sober look in his eyes, as if he were thinking : 
''I guess, Little Girl, you need some one to 
take care of you!" 

Poor tired Louisa leaned against his neck 
and was fast asleep in no time. The dog 
kept very still. He did not want to wake 
her. 

Pretty soon the town crier went by. He 
was ringing a bell and reading in a loud voice, 



LOUISA MAY ALCOTT 151 

from a paper in his hand, the description of 
a lost child. You see, Louisa's father and 
mother had missed her early in the forenoon 
and had looked for her in every place they 
could think of. Each hour they grew more 
worried, and at dusk they decided to hire 
this man to search the city. 

When the runaway woke up and heard 
what the man was shouting — "Lost — Lost 
— A little girl, six years old, in a pink frock, 
white hat, and new, green shoes" — she called 
out in the darkness : ''Why — dat's ME !" 

The town crier took Louisa by the hand and 
led her home, where you may be sure she 
was welcomed with joy. 

Mr. and Mrs. Alcott, from first to last, had 
had a good many frights about this flyaway 
Louisa. Once when she was only two years 
old they were traveling with her on a steam- 
boat, and she darted away, in some moment 
when no one was noticing her, and crawled 
into the engine-room to watch the machinery. 
Of course her clothes were all grease and dirt, 
and she might have been caught in the ma- 
chinery and hurt. 



152 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

You won't be surprised to know that the 
next day after this last affair Louisa's parents 
made sure that she did not leave the house. 
Indeed, to be entirely certain of her where- 
abouts, they tied her to the leg of a big sofa 
for a whole day! 

Except for this one fault. Louisa was a good 
child, so she felt much ashamed that she had 
caused her mother, whom she loved dearly, 
so much worr^-. As she sat there, tied to the 
sofa, she made up her mind that she would 
never frighten her so again. Xo — she would 
cure herself of the nmning-away habit ! 

After that day, whenever she felt the least 
de^dre to slip out of the house without asMng 
permission, she would hurn* to her own little 
room and shut the door tight. To keep her 
mind from bad plans she would shut her 
eyes and make up stories — think them all 
out, herself, you know. Then, when some 
of them seemed pretty good, she would write 
them down so that she would not forget 
them. By and by she found she liked making 
stories better than anything she had ever 
done in her life. 



LOUISA MAY ALCOTT . 153 

Her mother sometimes wondered why 
Louisa grew so fond of staying in her little 
chamber at the head of the stairs, all of a 
sudden, but was pleased that the runaway 
child had changed into such a quiet, like-to- 
st ay-at-home girl. 

It was a long time before Louisa dared to 
mention the stories and rhymes she had hidden 
in her desk but finally she told her mother 
about them, and when Mrs. Alcott had read 
them, she advised her to keep on writing. 
Louisa did so and became one of the best 
American story-tellers. She wrote a number 
of books, and if you begin with Lulu's Library, 
you will want to read Little Men and Little 
Women and all the books that dear Louisa 
Alcott ever wrote. 

At first Louisa was paid but small sums for 
her writings, and as the Alcott family were 
poor, she taught school, did sewing, took 
care of children, or worked at anything, always 
with a merry smile, so long as it provided 
comforts for those she loved. 

When the Civil War broke out, she was 
anxious to do something to help, so she went 



154 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

into one of the Union hospitals as a nurse. 
She worked so hard that she grew very ill, and 
her father had to go after her and bring her 
home. One of her books tells about her life 
in the hospital. 

It was soon after her return home that her 
books began to sell so well that she found 
herself, for the first time in her life, with a 
great deal of money. There was enough to 
buy luxuries for the Alcott family — there 
was enough for her to travel. No doubt she 
got more happiness in traveling than some 
people, for she found boys and girls in England, 
France, and Germany reading the very books 
she herself, Louisa May Alcott, had written. 
Then, too, at the age of fifty, she enjoyed ven- 
turing into new places just as well as she did 
the morning she sallied forth to Boston Com- 
mon in her new green shoes ! 



SAMUEL FINLEY BREESE MORSE 

Some of these days when you are learning 
about countries, mountains, and rivers, you 
may like to know that a minister by the name 
of Morse was called the Father of American 
Geography. He wrote all the first geogra- 
phies used. Some were hard, others much 
easier. But whatever he wrote, he had to 
have the house very quiet. Between the 
sermons he had to get ready for Sundays and 
the books he had to make for schools, he was 
nearly always writing in his study, so his 
little boy '' Sammy" had been taught to tiptoe 
through the rooms and to be quiet with his 
toys. He could not remember the time when 
his mother was not whispering, with a warning 
finger held up, ''Sh — Sh — Papa's writing !" 

Sammy liked to draw, especially faces! 
One day an old school-teacher had come to 
see his father about a geography. This man 
had a large, queer-shaped nose. Sammy 

155 



156 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

wondered if he could draw a picture of it. 
He did not dare disturb any one by asking 
for paper and pencil, so he took a large pin 
and scratched a picture on his mother's 
best mahogany bureau. The scratches looked 
so like the man that Sammy clapped his 
hands and shouted with laughter. His mother 
came running to see what had happened and 
when she looked ready to cry and said : ''Oh, 
Samuel Finley Breese Morse — what have 
you done?" he knew right away that some- 
thing was wrong. She usually called him 
just Sammy. It was only when she was 
displeased that she used the whole long name. 
After this he was watched pretty closely until 
he went to school. Then he grew so fond of 
reading that there did not seem to be time 
for anything else. 

In school it was noticed that Samuel Morse 
had better lessons than most of the boys, 
and that when it came to questions in history 
or questions about pictures and artists, it was 
Samuel who was able to answer them. When 
he was fourteen, he wrote a life of a noted 
Greek scholar. It was not published, but it 



SAMUEL FINLEY BREESE MORSE 157 

was very good. He also painted pictures 
in water colors of his home and portraits of 
all the family. These were so perfect that 
every one said he should go to Europe and 
study with the famous Benjamin West. 
Finally his parents agreed that this was the 
right thing for him to do, but they said he 
would have to live very simply, because the 
Morses were not rich. 

Samuel did not mind working hard, eating 
little, or dressing shabbily, if he could just 
study with a fine teacher. West noticed how 
willing Samuel was to do his pictures over and 
over again, so he took much pains with him. 
Samuel won several prizes and medals, and 
his pictures were talked of everjrwhere. 

Morse came back to Boston when he was 
twenty-four, poor and threadbare, but famous. 
People flocked to see his pictures but did not 
buy them. So he went to New York to try his 
luck in that city. From a little boy he had 
liked to try experiments with magnets and 
electricity, so he often went to lectures on 
electricity and thought about different things 
that might be done with such a force, if only 



158 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

people could learn how to use it. These 
lecturers that he heard often made the remark : 
"If only electricity could be made to write!'' 
This sentence kept going through Samuel's 
head, as he sat at his easel, painting. It 
stayed in his mind when he went to Europe 
for the second time. It followed him aboard 
ship when he was returning from that second 
trip, sad and discouraged, because a big 
picture on which he had spent much time and 
money had not sold. Poor Samuel Morse 
felt like crying, but he said to himself : "Well, 
I won't sit by myself and sulk just because I 
have had more hard luck. I will be sociable 
and talk with the other passengers." It was 
fortunate he did, for a group of men were 
telling about some experiments they had 
seen in Paris with a magnet and electricity. 
Samuel asked some questions and then began 
to pace the deck and think. Pretty soon he 
took out a notebook from his pocket and 
began to make marks in it. He got more and 
more excited as the hours went by, for he 
knew he had thought of something wonderful. 
He had invented an alphabet for sending 



SAMUEL FINLEY BREESE MORSE 159 

dispatches from one part of the world to 
another! When it was dayhght, he had 
written out an alphabet of dots and dashes 
that stood for every letter and number in 
the English language ! 

Morse expected others to be as pleased as 
he with his invention, but they did not even 
believe in it. "The idea," said they, "that a 
man in New York can talk with another in 
San Francisco !" 

Of course, if people did not believe Morse's 
idea was right, they naturally would not give 
any money to try it out, so for years this man 
almost starved while he lived in one small 
room that had to serve for work-shop, bed- 
room, kitchen, and artist's studio, while he 
took pupils, did small pictures, anything, in 
fact, to get money for his machine and to pay 
for his room and food. You see he needed 
one beautifully made machine, and he must 
have a long line of poles and wires built before 
he could prove that with his dots and dashes 
people could talk to each other, although 
they were miles apart. And this would cost 
a lot of money. He sent many letters to 



160 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

Washington, asking Congress to help him. 
The men in Congress were not interested. 
His letters were not answered. '^Poor old 
chap," they laughed, ''he's gone crazy over 
his scheme!" 

Finally, as no attention was paid to his 
letters, Mr. Morse saved up a little money and 
went to Washington himself. One senator 
agreed to ask Congress to advance him some 
money. But the time kept slipping by, and 
nothing was done. 

One night when it was late, and all the sena- 
tors were eager to get through with bills and 
business, the senator who liked Mr. Morse 
saw him sitting away up in the gallery, all 
alone. He went up to him and said: ''I 
know your bill (or request) will not pass. 
Oh, do give it up and go home!" 

When Mr. Morse went out of the building, 
he had given up all hopes of getting help. 
He went to his boarding-house, and when he 
had paid for the room and his breakfast the 
next morning, (he never ran in debt — for 
he had a horror of it !) he had just thirty- 
seven cents left in the world. After he had 



SAMUEL FINLEY BREESE MORSE 161 

crept up the many flights of stairs, he shut 
the door of his small room and knelt down 
beside his bed. He told God that he was 
going to give up his invention — that perhaps 
it was not right for him to succeed. He had 
tried to do something which he thought 
would be a help in the world, and if he could 
not, he would try to be brave and sensible 
about it. Then, being very tired, he fell 
asleep like a tired child. 

But the next morning — what do you 
think ? — a young lady, the daughter of the 
friendly senator, came rushing into the room 
where Mr. Morse was eating his breakfast, 
and holding out both hands, said joyfully: 
'^IVe come to congratulate you. Your bill 
has passed!" 

"It cannot be," he answered. 

"Oh, it is true. My father let me be the 
bearer of the good news." 

"Well," said Mr. Morse, trembling with 
delight, "you, my dear message-bearer, shall 
send the first message that ever goes across 
the wires." 

It did not take long to convince the world 



162 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

that Professor Morse (as he was now called) 
had invented a fine thing. In less than a 
year a line was completed from Washington 
to Baltimore, and Miss Ellsworth, the kind 
senator's daughter, sent the first message 
ever heard over a recording telegraph. 

People found it a great blessing to be able 
to send quick news, and Samuel Morse was 
soon called the greatest benefactor of the 
age. The man who had lived in one room and 
who had gone for two days at a time without 
food received so many invitations to banquets 
that he could not go to half of them. The 
ten powers of Europe held a special congress 
and sent the inventor eighty thousand dollars 
for a gift. The Sultan of Turkey, the King 
of Prussia, the Queen of Spain, the Emperor 
of the French, the King of Denmark, all sent 
decorations and presents. The name of 
Samuel F. B. Morse was on every lip. 

But all this success did not spoil him one bit. 
He was the same modest, lovable man he 
had always been. Very few Americans have 
had so much honor paid to them as he. When 
he was an old man, the telegraph people all 



SAMUEL FINLEY BREESE MORSE 163 

over the world wanted to show their esteem 
for him and so erected a statue to his memory 
in Central Park, New York. An evening 
reception was held in a large hall, and when 
Samuel Morse came upon the stage, how the 
audience rose and cheered ! He was led to a 
table on which had been placed the first tele- 
graph register ever used. In some clever 
way this had been joined to every telegraph 
wire in America and to those in foreign lands. 
Mr. Morse put his fingers on the keys, and 
after thanking his friends for their gift, 
spelled out, with his own dots and dashes, 
his farewell greeting ; it was this — Glory 
to God in the highest, and on earth peace, 
good will toward men ! 

When Jedediah Morse wrote his geographies 
of the United States, he little thought the 
small boy Samuel, who tried so hard not to 
disturb him, would one day bind all the 
countries on the globe together ! 



WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

George Washington was a daring soldier 
himself and of course noticed how other men 
behaved on a battlefield. He liked a man 
who had plenty of courage — a real hero. 
There was a certain Colonel Prescott who 
fought at the battle of Bunker Hill whom 
Washington admired. He always spoke of 
him as Prescott, the brave. 

Colonel Prescott had a grandson, William 
Hickling Prescott, who was never in a battle in 
his life and did not know the least thing about 
soldiering, but he deserved the same title his 
grandfather won — '^ Prescott, the brave" — 
as you will see. 

William was born in Salem, in 1796. His 
father, a lawyer who afterwards became a 
famous judge, was a rich man, so William 
and his younger brothers and sisters had a 
beautiful home; and as his mother was a 
laughing, joyous woman, the little Prescotts 
had a happy childhood. 

164 



WILLIAM HICKLING P^ESCOTT 165 

William was much petted by his parents. 
His mother taught him to read and write, 
but when he was very small he went to school 
to a lady who loved her pupils so well that 
she never allowed people to call her a school- 
teacher — she said she was a school-mo^/ier. 
Between his pleasant study hours with Miss 
Higginson, this school-mother, and his merry 
play hours at home, the days were never quite 
long enough for William. 

When he was seven, he was placed in a 
private school taught by Master Knapp. 
And there he was asked to study rather more 
than he liked. He had loved story books 
almost from his cradle, and what he read was 
very real to him. Sometimes, when he was 
only a tiny boy, he felt so sure the goblins, 
fairies, and giants of which he had been reading 
might suddenly appear, unless his mother 
were at hand to banish them, that he would 
follow her from room to room, holding on to 
her gown. Still these books were much nicer, 
he thought, than the ones Master Knapp told 
him to study. He was full of fun and frolic 
and took all Master Knapp's rebukes so 



166 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

cheerfully that the teacher could not get 
angry with him. His schoolmates adored 
him. Even if he did play a good many jokes 
on them, they were not mean, vicious jokes. 
He had altogether too kind a heart to hurt 
a person or to say unkind things. He did 
manage to get his history lessons, and he liked 
to read lives of great men. But he did not 
study any great amount until after his father 
moved to Boston, and William began to fit 
himself for Harvard College. He was proud 
of his father and fancied that he would like to 
be a lawyer like him. 

Young Prescott had been in college but a 
short time when, one night at dinner, a rough, 
rude student hurled a hard crust of bread 
across the table, not aiming at any one in 
particular. But it hit Prescott in his left 
eye and destroyed the sight in it. The poor 
fellow fell to the floor as if he were dead and 
was very ill for weeks. Then it was that he 
began to earn his title of Prescott, the brave. 
He did not complain, he did not say : "Well, 
of course, I shall never try to do anything now 
that I have only one eye to use." Instead, 




The poor fellow fell to the floor as if he were dead. 
Pase 1 66. 



WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 167 

he kept up his spirits and finished his course at 
Harvard gayly. Everybody talked of his 
pluck. He was asked to be orator of his class, 
and he wrote for graduation day a Latin 
poem on Hope, which he recited with such a 
happy face and manner that the people 
clapped their hands and cheered. His parents 
were so pleased that William could finish 
his college work, in spite of his accident, and 
that he could keep right on being a rollicking, 
laughing boy, that they spread a great tent 
on the college grounds and feasted five hundred 
friends who had come to see William graduate. 
Then William went on a wonderful visit 
to the Azores. His mother's brother, Thomas 
Hickling, was United States Consul at St. 
Michael. This uncle had married a Portuguese 
lady, and there was a large family of cousins 
to entertain the New England boy. Mr. 
Hickling had a big country house and a lot of 
spirited horses. As William drove over the 
lovely island, he used to laugh at the funny 
little burros the working people rode and the 
strange costumes they wore. Of course, he 
found St. Michael a different looking place 



168 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

from Boston, with its brick, or sober-colored 
houses. At the Azores, you know, everything 
is bright and gay. A salmon-pink castle 
stands next a square, box-like house, painted 
yellow ; a blue villa and a buff villa probably 
adjoin dainty green and lavender cottages, 
and occasionally a fancy little dwelling, all 
towers and balconies, will be painted cherry 
red. Then the mountain peaks behind all 
these houses are vivid green. So William 
felt almost as if he were in fairyland. 

When he had been looking at these beautiful 
things about six weeks, he found suddenly, 
one morning, that they had turned black. 
He could not see a bit with his well eye ! A 
doctor was sent for and he said : ''A perfectly 
dark room for you, William Prescott, for three 
months, and only enough food to keep you 
alive !" In all the ninety-five days the doctor 
kept him shut in, William was never heard 
to utter one word of complaint. His cousins 
sat with him a good deal (thankful that he 
could not see them cry), and he told them funny 
stories, sang songs, and paced back and forth 
for exercise, with his elbows held way out 



WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 169 

at his sides to avoid running into the furni- 
ture. He finally saw again but had to be very 
careful of that one useful eye all the rest of 
his life. The minute he used it too much, 
the blindness would come on again. 

As studying law was out of the question for 
him, he thought he would write histories. 
He had already learned a good deal about 
the different countries but knew most about 
Spain. So he set about learning all he could 
of that country as far back as the days of 
Christopher Columbus. Of course, this 
brought in King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella 
(you remember she offered to sell her jewels 
to help Columbus) and stories of Peru and 
Mexico, so that William Prescott spent most 
of his life gathering facts together about the 
Spanish people. And the histories of them 
he wrote (eight large books) sound almost 
like story books; when you read them you 
seem to see the banquet halls, the queens 
followed by their pages and ladies-in-waiting, 
the priests chanting hymns in their monaster- 
ies, and the Mexican generals in their showy 
uniforms. 



170 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

Think how hard it was for William Prescott 
to make these histories. He dared use his 
eye but a few hours a week. So he hired 
people to read to him, to go to libraries to look 
at old papers and letters, and to copy the 
notes he made on a queer machine. You can 
see this instrument that he contrived at the 
Massachusetts Historical Society. Some pieces 
of wood held sheets of paper in place ; other 
strips of wood kept the pencil going in fairly 
straight lines. But sometimes when he used 
this at night, or when his eye was bandaged, 
he would forget to put in a fresh sheet of paper 
and would scribble ahead for a long time, 
writing the same lines over and across until 
his secretaries would have a hard time to find 
out what he meant. He did not want to 
waste time by asking to have the same thing 
read twice to him, so he trained his memory 
until he could carry the exact words on a page 
in his mind, and after a while he could repeat 
whole chapters without a mistake. But it was 
slow work making books this way. He was 
ten years getting his first one, the history of 
Ferdinand and Isabella, ready for the publisher. 



WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 171 

Prescott did not talk about this work. No 
one but his parents and the secretaries knew 
that he was busy at all, because in his resting 
hours he was often seen at balls and parties, 
laughing and chatting in his own lively way. 
And one day one of his relatives drew him 
aside (this was when he had been grinding 
away in his library for eight years) and said : 
'' William, it seems to me you are wasting 
your time sadly. Why don't you stop being 
so idle and try some kind of work?" 

This same relation and all Prescott's friends 
were astonished and proud enough when, 
two years later, three big volumes of Spanish 
history were for sale in the book-stores, with 
William Hickling Prescott's name given as 
the author. That season every one who could 
afford it gave their friends a Christmas 
present of the Prescott books. He had com- 
pliments enough to turn his head, but he was 
too sensible to be vain. He wrote several 
other books and soon became famous. When 
he was in London, he had many honors shown 
him. 

Prescott was fond of children and always 



172 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

kept a stock of candy and sweets on hand for 
small people. His servants adored him and 
so did his secretaries. They used to tell how 
he would frolic, even at his work. Sometimes 
when he had got to a place in one of the books 
where he must describe a battle scene, he 
would dash about the room, singing at the 
top of his lungs some stirring ballad like: 
^'Oh, give me but my Arab steed!" And 
then when he felt he really "had his steam 
up" he would begin to write. He was kind 
and generous and showed so much courtesy to 
rich and poor alike that he has been called 
the finest gentleman of his time. No doubt 
he was, but it is true, too, that he was Pres- 
cott, the Brave ! 



PHILLIPS BROOKS 

One of the greatest preachers in America 
was a Boston boy. His name was Phillips 
Brooks, and there is a fine statue of him 
near Trinity Church, where he was rector for 
twenty-two years. 

When Phillips was a little boy, he and his 
five brothers made quite a long row, or circle, 
when they sat at the big library table learning 
their lessons for the next day's school, while 
their happy-faced mother sat near with her 
sewing, and their father read. 

The Brooks boys had all the newest story- 
books, games, music, and parties, so they were 
a very jolly lot, but it is Phillips I want to tell 
you the most about. 

Phillips liked books better than play and 
was such a bright pupil that his teachers were 
always praising him. In fact, he was a 
favorite everyivhere. It did not make much 
difference whether he was spending his vaca- 

173 



174 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

tion in Andover with his Grandma Phillips, 
walking across Boston Common with his 
mother, or hurrying in the morning sunshine 
to the Boston Latin School, people who 
looked at his handsome face and his big 
brown eyes said to themselves: ^' There goes 
a boy to be proud of !" 

It was just the same when he went to Har- 
vard College. He was such a likeable chap 
that he was asked to join all the clubs and 
invited to the merry-makings of the students. 
But he was rather shy. Perhaps he had 
grown too fast, for he was only fifteen years 
old and six feet, three inches tall — think of 
it ! He stayed in his own room a good deal, 
writing and trying for prizes. He won several. 
He did not like arithmetic or figures of any 
kind, but anything about the different coun- 
tries or the lives of men and women would keep 
him bending over a book half the night. 

Things had gone pretty easily for Phillips 
up to the time he graduated from Harvard. 
He had always found faces and voices pleasant. 
So you can see how hurt he must have been 
when the very first time he tried to teach 



PHILLIPS BROOKS 175 

school the pupils were ugly and rude to him. 
It almost broke his heart that they did not 
want to mind him. The smaller boys loved 
him and took pride in learning their lessons, 
but the older ones hardly opened their books. 
Instead of that they spent their time making 
the young teacher's life miserable. He was 
only nineteen ! Poor fellow, he must have 
wished many a day that he was at the North 
Pole or the South Seas instead of in Boston. 
These rowdies threw heads of matches on 
the floor and grinned when they exploded; 
they piled wood in the stoves until every one 
gasped for breath ; they fired wads of paper at 
each other; and once they threw shot in 
Phillips's face. 

The principal of the school beat his boys 
when they did not behave, and he had no 
patience with Phillips for not doing the same. 
But Phillips could not do that. He finally 
said he would resign. Some principals would 
have said to the young teacher : '^Now, don't 
mind it if you have not done very well at 
teaching; there are, no doubt, other things 
that you will find you can do better than this. 



176 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

Good luck to you — my lad. Remember 
you have always a friend in me ! " But 
Phillips's principal glared at him and declared : 
''Well, if you have failed to make a good 
teacher, you will fail in everything else." 

Just then Phillips did not think of much else 
but his own disappointment. His father and 
his five brothers were very successful at their 
work and it shamed him to think he was not. 

Phillips's brown eyes were very serious in 
those days. The same ones who had once 
sighed: ''There's a boy to be proud of," 
now showed no pity in their looks, and often 
hurried down a side street to avoid bowing 
to him. Dear me — and it was the very 
same boy they had praised when he was taking 
prizes ! 

Phillips began to feel that he would like to 
help the people in the world who had the 
heartache. There seemed to be plenty to 
help the happy, rich folks, but there were 
many others who he was sure needed a friendly 
word and hand-clasp to give them new courage. 
His pastor advised him to become a preacher. 

This meant more study. So he went to a 



PHILLIPS BROOKS 177 

seminary down in Virginia, where men fit 
themselves for the ministry. He got there 
after school had begun, so he had to take a 
room in an attic. There was no fire in it, 
poor light, and he, with his six feet and three 
inches, could not stand up straight in it without 
bumping his head against the rafters. And 
his bed was not nearly long enough for him. 
It is a nuisance, sometimes, to be as tall as 
Phillips was. But he never minded all these 
things. He only felt in a hurry to finish his 
studies so that he could preach and work 
among the poor. 

After he had preached at two churches in 
Philadelphia, he was asked to be the rector of 
Trinity Church in Boston. He was rector 
there for twenty-two years — until he was 
made Bishop of Massachusetts. He spoke 
so beautifully from the pulpit that strangers 
traveled from all parts of the country to hear 
him. So many flocked to Trinity Church 
that the pews would not hold them. Chairs 
were packed in the aisles, and a few more people 
managed to hear him by squeezing on to the 
pulpit steps. 



178 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

Phillips Brooks's sermons were wonderful, 
but his work among the sick and the poor 
was more wonderful still. He carried help 
and good cheer with him every day. The 
more good he did, the happier he grew himself. 
His laugh rang out like a boy's. By the time 
he was made Bishop, he was so merry that he 
could hardly contain himself. He helped poor 
men find work; he held sick children while 
their mothers rested; he coaxed young men 
away from bad habits, and, like his Master, 
he went about doing good. He did not look 
sober or bothered with all this, either. There 
was always a smile on his face. 

Phillips Brooks had no wife or children 
but several nieces. At his home, on Clarendon 
Street, he kept a doll, a music-box, and many 
toys for them to play with. Every little while, 
when he was all tired out with his preaching 
and his cheering-up work, he would take a long 
trip to some distant country, and from all 
these strange places he would write letters 
to these nieces which made them nearly 
explode with laughter when their mothers 
read them aloud. All the fimny sights in 



PHILLIPS BROOKS 179 

Venice were described, and the stories about 
the children in India made the eyes of Susie 
and Gertrude Brooks open their widest. 
At the end of almost every letter he would 
charge the little girls ''not to forget their 
Uncle Phillips." As if any one who had 
ever known Bishop Brooks could forget him ! 
But Christmas time was the best of all for 
these little girls. Their uncle Phillips took 
them right along with him to buy the presents 
for the whole family. This would be weeks 
and weeks before it was time for Santa Claus, 
so he would make them promise not to lisp a 
word of what was in the packages that arrived 
at the rectory. They loved sharing secrets 
with him and would not have told one for any 
money. That was a strange thing about 
Phillips Brooks — he made people trust- 
worthy. He always believed the best of 
every one, and no one wanted to disappoint 
him. 

Sometimes when the girls and their uncle 
started on one of these entrancing shopping 
tours, it did seem as if they would never 
reach the shops. So many passers-by wanted 



180 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

a word with the great preacher they had to 
halt every other minute. I have no doubt 
his smile was as sunny for the Irish scrub- 
woman who hurried after him to ask a favor 
as it had been for good Queen Victoria when 
she thanked him for preaching her a sermon 
in the Royal Chapel at Windsor Castle. 

Because his heart was filled with love and 
sympathy, Phillips Brooks left the world 
better and happier than he found it. Now, 
if every one who passes his statue at Trinity 
Church should say: ''I really must do some 
kind, generous thing myself, each day in 
the week," there would be sort of a Christ- 
massy feeling all the year round, and we should 
keep a little of the sunshine which the Bishop 
of Massachusetts shed, still shining. 



SAMUEL CLEMENS 
Better Known as 
MARK TWAIN 

John Clemens, Samuel's father, was a 
farmer, merchant, and postmaster in a Mis- 
souri town, called Florida. His wife, Jane 
Clemens, was a stirring, busy woman, who 
liked to get her work out of the way and then 
have a real frolic. Her husband did not 
know what it meant to frolic. He was not 
very well to begin with, and when he had any 
spare time, he sat by himself figuring away 
on an invention, year after year. He spent 
a good deal of time, too, thinking what fine 
things he would do for his family when he sold 
a great tract of land in Tennessee. He had 
bought seventy-five thousand acres of land 
when he was much younger, for just a few 
cents an acre, and when that land went up in 
price, he expected to be pointed out as a mil- 
lionaire, at least. John Clemens was a good 

181 



182 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

man and something of a scholar, but he was 
not the least bit merry. His children never saw 
him laugh once in his whole life ! Think of it ! 

Mrs. Clemens did not like to have any one 
around when she was bustling through the 
housework, so the six children spent the days 
roaming through the country, picking nuts 
and berries. When it came night and they 
had had their supper, they would crowd around 
the open fire and coax Jennie, a slave girl, 
or Uncle Ned, a colored farm-hand, to tell 
them stories. 

Uncle Ned was a famous story-teller. When 
he described witches and goblins, the children 
would look over their shoulders as if they half 
expected to see the queer creatures in the 
room. All these stories began ^'Once 'pon 
a time," but each one ended differently. One 
of the children, Sam Clemens, admired Uncle 
Ned's stories so that he could hardly wait for 
evening to come. 

Sam was a delicate child. The neighbors 
used to shake their heads and declare he 
would never live to be a man, and every one 
always spoke of him as ''little Sam." 



SAMUEL CLEMENS 183 

When Mr. Clemens moved to another town 
some distance away, the mother said instantly : 
''Well, Hannibal may be all right for your 
business, but Florida agrees so well with little 
Sam, that I shall spend every summer here 
with the children, on the Quarles farm." 

The children were glad she held to this plan, 
for Mr. Quarles laughed and joked with them, 
built them high swings, let them ride in 
ox-teams and go on horseback, and tumble in 
the hayfields all they wished. They had so 
much fun and exercise that they were even 
willing to go to bed without any stories. 
Sam grew plump. 

A funny thing happened the first summer 
they went to nice Mr. Quarles's. Mrs. 
Clemens, with the older children, the new 
baby, and Jennie, went on ahead in a large 
wagon. Sam was asleep. Mr. Clemens was to 
wait until he woke up and then was to carry 
him on horseback, to join the rest. Well, as 
Mr. Clemens was waiting for Sam to finish 
his nap, he got to thinking of his invention, 
or his Tennessee land, and presently he 
saddled and bridled the horse and rode away 



184 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

without him. He never thought of Sam 
again until his wife said, as he reached the 
Quarles's dooryard : ''Where is httle Sam?" 

''Why — why — " he stammered, "I must 
have forgotten him." Of course he was 
ashamed of himself and hurried a man off to 
Hannibal, on a swift horse, where Sam was 
found hungry and frightened, wandering 
through the locked house. 

Sam was sent to school when he was five. 
He certainly did not like to study very well 
but did learn to be a fine reader and speller. 

At the age of nine, Sam was a good swimmer 
(although he came very near being drowned 
three different times, while he was learning) 
and loved the river so that he was to be found 
on its shore almost any hour of the day. He 
longed to travel by steamer. Once he ran 
away and hid on board one until it was well 
down the river. As soon as he showed himself 
to the captain, he was put ashore, his father 
was sent for, and he received a whipping that 
he remembered a long time. 

At nine he had a head rather too large for 
his body, and it looked even bigger because 



SAMUEL CLEMENS 185 

he had such a lot of waving, sandy hair. He 
had fine gray eyes, a slow, drawling voice, 
and said such droll things that the boys 
listened to everything he said. His two best 
chums were Will Bowen and John Briggs. 
These three friends could run like deer, and 
what time they were not fishing or swimming 
they usually spent in a cave which they had 
found. 

At twelve he was just a careless, happy, 
barefoot boy, often in mischief, and only ex- 
celling in two things at school. He won the 
weekly medal for spelling, and his compositions 
were so funny that the teachers and pupils 
used to laugh till the tears came, when they 
were read aloud. His teachers said he ought 
to train himself for a writer, but it did not 
seem to him that there was anything so noble 
or desirable in this world as being a pilot. 
And he loved the great Mississippi River better 
than any place he had known or could imagine. 

Sam's father died, whispering: ''Don't sell 
the Tennessee land! Hold on to it, and you 
will all be rich!" 

After his death Sam learned the printer's 



186 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

trade. He was very quick in setting type 
and accurate, so that he soon helped his older 
brother start a newspaper. He worked with 
his brother until he was eighteen, and then he 
told his mother that he wanted to start tmt 
for himself in the world. Jane Clemens 
loved him dearly and hated to part wdth him, 
but when she saw his heart was set on going, 
she took up a testament and said : " Well, Sam, 
you may try it, but I want you to take hold 
of this book and make me a promise. I want 
you to repeat after me these words — ' I do 
solemnly swear that I will not throw a card 
or drink a drop of liquor while I am gone !' " 

He repeated these words after her, bade her 
good-by, and went to St. Louis. He meant 
to travel, and as he earned enough by news- 
paper work, he visited New York, Phila- 
delphia, and was on his way to South America 
when he got a chance to be a pilot on the 
Mississippi River. While he was learning 
this trade, he was happier than he had ever 
been in his life. If you want to know what 
happened to him at this time you must read a 
book he wrote. Life on the Mississippi River. 



SAMUEL CLEMENS 187 

He wrote a great many books and signed 
whatever he wrote with a queer name — 
MARK TWAIN. This was an old term 
used by pilots to show how deep the water is 
where they throw the lead. His writings, 
like his boyish compositions, made people 
laugh. So that now, although he has been 
dead several years, whenever the name of 
Mark Twain is mentioned, a smile goes around. 
If you want to know more about the actual 
doings of Sam and his chums. Will Bowen and 
John Briggs, read Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry 
Finn, for in those books Sam has set down a 
pretty fair account of their escapades. 

Mr. Clemens had a wife and children of 
whom he was very fond. As he made much 
money from his books and lectures, they 
were all able to travel in foreign countries, 
and his best book of travel is Innocents 
Abroad. It seems to me that even his father 
would have laughed over that book. Speak- 
ing of his father again reminds me to tell you 
that the Tennessee land never brought any 
luxuries to the Clemens family. It was sold 
for less than the taxes had amounted to. 



JOE JEFFERSON 

Joseph, or as he was always called, Joe 
Jefferson was a great actor. And there is 
never much talk of theaters, actors, and plays 
but some one is apt to say: ''Ah, but you 
should have seen Joe Jefferson in Rip Van 
Winkle!" All Americans are very proud 
of the fact that this man was born in the 
United States; that he lived and died here. 
There have been four actors in the Jefferson 
family by the name of Joseph, but it was 
Joe Jefferson Number Three who played 
the part of the queer old Dutchman, Rip Van 
Winkle, for thirty years, whose life is told of 
now. 

Joe was born in Philadelphia, but his 
parents went to Washington soon after. They 
lived in a house whose back hall led right 
into the side entrance of a theater. As soon 
as he could walk about by himself, little Joe 
used to run through this hall and play all 

188 



JOE JEFFERSON 189 

day long in the empty theater, behind the 
scenes. Out in that part of the old building 
there were all kinds of stage settings piled 
up behind the wings. There were large 
pieces of canvas painted to look like an Italian 
lake, or an English garden, or a Roman 
palace. There was a tiny cottage, with a real 
door just big enough for Joe to squeeze through 
and slam behind him. He used to pretend 
that he owned this cottage. There were 
throne chairs for the make-believe kings and 
queens to sit in, a robber's cave, and a lovely 
board and canvas bank, covered with moss 
and flowers. Two or three children often 
joined Joe here, and they gave plays which 
they made up themselves. Oh, it was such 
an odd, exciting place to play in! 

In the dressing-room of this old theater 
was a large mirror, and Joe loved to stand 
before this and act little bits of certain plays 
which he had heard his parents recite. His 
mother was a singer, and his father both an 
actor and manager, so Joe, being just across 
the hall, was often carried on to the stage 
when some play called for a baby or smaU 



190 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

child. Then, too, some evenings he would 
escape from his nurse, and, in his night-dress, 
peep in through the door of the dressing-room 
and watch the actors making up for their 
parts. 

When Joe was four, a friend of the family 
was making a great success of a negro part 
called ''Jim Crow." A good deal of dancing 
and singing went with it, and it was no time 
at all before little Joe could copy the man 
perfectly. This made Rice, the friend, pleased 
enough, and he insisted that Joe should go 
through the part in public. Rice was more 
than six feet tall, and Joe was a tiny four- 
year-old child. You don't wonder, I am 
sure, when the two stood on the stage, side 
by side, dressed exactly alike, that the 
audience shouted with laughter. First the 
big Jim Crow would sing a verse and dance, 
and then the tiny Jim would do the same. 
The people in the audience kept clapping their 
hands for more and threw silver coins on to 
the stage for the child, until stage hands, 
after the curtain went down, picked up 
twenty-four dollars and gave them to Joe. 



JOE JEFFERSON 191 

In spite of Joe's being most carefully trained 
by his parents to tell the truth and say his 
prayers, he did, when he was small, let his 
fancy run away with him sometimes, and to 
a dear old lady, always dressed in stiffly 
starched frills, black gown and mitts, who 
kept a book and notion store, he told stories 
of horrors that never really happened. 
No doubt he liked to see her hold up her 
hands in dismay as he described some imagi- 
nary runaway accident, and no doubt he liked 
to have her run to bring him a nice, cool 
drink to '^ steady his nerves after such a shock- 
ing sight!" 

Belonging to an actor's family means, of 
course, living in many different cities. Joe 
had known Philadelphia, Washington, and 
New York well when the Jefferson family 
went to Illinois. As Springfield was the 
capital of that State, and the men attending 
the legislature would swell the audiences, 
Joe's father decided to build a theater there. 
Just as it was finished, the ministers of the 
place began to preach against allowing a 
theater there at all. They preached to such 



192 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

good effect that the city council put a tre- 
mendous tax on the building, so big a tax 
that poor Mr. Jefferson could not begin to pay 
it, for he had used every dollar he had in build- 
ing the theater. While he was wondering 
what he would do, a young lawyer of Spring- 
field came to him and said that, as he thought 
the tax was out of all reason, he would agree 
to bring the matter before the council, free 
of charge. Well — this lawyer made such a 
strong plea, and got the members of the council 
into such gales of laughter with his funny 
stories, that the tax was removed, and Mr. 
Jefferson opened his playhouse and made a 
good deal of money. 

The young lawyer's name was Abraham 
Lincoln ! 

Tennessee proved an unlucky State for the 
Jeffersons. At Memphis there had been a 
money panic, and people had no heart for 
theaters. Joe's father had always known 
how to paint scenery, and now he advertised 
to paint signs, but did not get many orders. 
Joe heard that a law was passed that all 
carts, drays, and carriages in the city of 



JOE JEFFERSON 193 

Memphis must bear numbers. He went to the 
mayor's house and rang the bell. ''Please, 
Mr. Mayor," he said, ''I'm Joe Jefferson's 
son." 

"Oh, yes, my boy; I've seen both you and 
your father on the stage." 

"Well, Sir, my father can paint signs as 
well as act, and now that the theaters are 
closed he is glad of outside work. Couldn't 
you please give him the contract to paint 
the numbers on your city carriages?" 

The mayor's eyes twinkled. He was 
pleased with the business-like way of the boy 
and granted his request. The money from 
this work was a help, and right after that a 
rich man hired Joe's father to paint Scottish 
scenes on the walls of his reception hall, so 
they were getting on quite comfortably when 
poor Mr. Jefferson was taken ill and died. 
This meant that Joe and his sister must leave 
school and go to work. Mrs. Jefferson opened 
a boarding-house, and the two children joined 
a traveling theatrical company. They did 
fancy dancing and sang comic duets, and ever 
so many times when they pretended to laugh, 



194 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

they were so tired and homesick that they 
wanted to cry. Sometimes Joe would be 
given a few Hnes to speak in some play. It 
seemed as if he would never get a chance to 
show what talent he really had. But he 
studied all his spare time and watched great 
actors carefully, because he intended to win a 
high place on the stage some day. 

By and by Laura Keene, an actress who had 
a theater of her own in New York, let him 
try a leading character in a play that ran 
one hundred and fifty nights. There was 
not one of these performances at which 
the audience did not applaud young Joe 
Jefferson and say they wanted to see him in 
something else. And when they did see him 
in Dickens's Cricket on the Hearth, as dear old 
Caleb Plummer, and as Bob Acres in The 
Rivals, they exclaimed: ''This young man 
is a wonder ! Why, he knows the whole art 
of acting!" But Joe Jefferson did not think 
he knew half enough. He kept on studying 
for he meant to improve still more. 

Finally, after he had become quite famous 
in half a dozen different parts, in this country, 



JOE JEFFERSON 195 

in England, and Australia, he began giving 
the most wonderful play of all — the one 
always called his masterpiece — ''Rip Van 
Winkle." In a few years he had all the fame, 
wealth, and praise that a man could ask for. 
The little fellow who, at four years of age, 
was blacked up to dance ''Jim Crow" and 
gathered twenty-four dollars for his queer 
antics, forty years later could easily count on 
a thousand dollars for one night's appearance 
in Rip Van Winkle. But we must not forget 
how hard and patiently he had worked for 
this. We must not forget what he had actu- 
ally done. He had educated himself so that 
he had friends among the most cultivated 
people in the world ; he was quoted as one of 
the most polished and finished actors in 
America; and he had earned enough money 
to bring up his own children in luxury. 

Joe Jefferson had a lovely old age. He 
bought a large southern estate, where he spent 
the winter months, and he owned a summer 
home at Buzzard's Bay, Massachusetts, where 
he fished and painted pictures to his heart's 
content, and where he entertained many dis- 



196 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

tinguished people. After he stopped playing, 
except once in a while, and intended to 
retire from the stage, every now and then 
there would be such a call for him that he 
would consent to give ''Rip Van Winkle" 
just once more. He must have been about 
perfect in this play, else how is it that old 
theater-goers look so happy and satisfied 
when they say: "Ah, you should have seen 
the great Joe Jefferson in Rip Van Winkle !" 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

When Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the 
poet, was a boy, he lived in Portland, Maine. 
In those days Portland did much trading 
with the West Indies, and Henry and his 
boy friends liked to stay down at the wharves 
when the Portland vessels came in. It was 
sport to watch the burly negroes unload the 
hogsheads of molasses, the barrels of sugar, 
and the spices. The boys used to wish they 
were sailors or captains, so that they could 
sail across the water and perhaps have great 
adventures. Henry also thought it would 
suit him to be a soldier, and when he was five 
years old, and there was much talk about the 
great war which is called the War of 1812, he 
sent a letter to his father, who happened to 
be away at the time, that he had a toy gun 
already, and if his father would please buy 
him a drum, he would start right off for the 
battle-field. Probably he was not as warlike 

197 



198 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

as he fancied he was, for one Fourth of July 
just after that, he jumped every time a cannon 
went off and begged his mother to stuff his 
ears with cotton, so that he would not hear 
the banging. 

Henry liked music and books far better 
than fighting. He read a great deal with his 
mother, and they took long walks together, 
for they both loved flowers and birds. Twice 
every Sunday Henry went to church with his 
mother. In the cold weather he carried her 
foot-stove for her (a funny little box which 
held coals) and in the summer her nosegay, 
because she never went to service, after the 
flowers began to bloom, without a bunch of 
sweet smelling blossoms. This odd foot- 
warmer can be seen any time in the old 
Wadsworth-Longfellow house in Portland. 
Visitors from all over the world, even from 
India and Turkey, have wandered through 
this home of the poet to look at the desk at 
which he wrote, the rich mahogany chairs, 
and the old-fashioned mirrors. 

Henry was willing to do errands or any 
tasks that his mother wished him to do. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 199 

He did not mind even driving the cow to pas- 
ture, for as he walked along, he was usually 
making up rhymes. And although he had 
very good lessons in school, he often scribbled 
little jingles in his copy book. When he was 
thirteen, he told his sister that he was going to 
send a poem to the Portland newspaper. He 
did not tell any one but her, and he only 
signed "Henry" at the end of the poem, so 
although the editor printed it, the other school 
children did not find out for a long time 
that it was his. Henry and his sister read 
the printed verses until they wore the news- 
paper to shreds and felt they had a lovely 
secret. 

After Henry graduated from college, his 
father wanted him to be a lawyer, like him- 
self, but Henry was sure he wanted to be an 
author. He said: ''Don't ask me to study 
law, father ; I think I can write books. Any- 
way, if you will let me have my way, I will 
promise to be famous at something. '^ So 
his parents let him travel through Europe, 
and when he sent long, happy letters home, 
telling about the different things he saw, 



200 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

they were so charming that all the neighbors 
wanted to borrow the letters, and Mr. and 
Mrs. Longfellow agreed that Henry would 
probably be famous with his pen. 

When Henry came home again, he was 
chosen for a college professor. He was only 
twenty-two, and it began to look as if the 
Portland boy would be a success even if he 
did not study law. 

The students at Harvard College loved 
young Professor Longfellow. He was so 
handsome, so lively, so exquisitely neat in 
dress, that they were very proud to introduce 
him to their parents, and best of all, he made 
their lessons so interesting that they were 
actually sorry when the class was dismissed. 
He proved a fine teacher. But, besides 
teaching in the college, Henry wrote poem 
after poem. It was not long before his 
verses were liked in other countries as well 
as in America. French people began to 
say: ''Why, we want our children to know 
Henry Wads worth Longfellow's poems !'^ 
And Spanish ladies and Italian noblemen de- 
clared they were beautiful. Finally so many 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 201 

countries were asking for these poems they 
were translated into fifteen languages. 

Longfellow was soon called '^The Poet of 
Every Land." 

You will think that was the right name for 
him, when you hear what happened on a big 
ocean steamer. Once a large party of travel- 
ers were sailing from Greece to France. As 
they sat talking one evening, somebody 
praised the great French poet, Victor Hugo. 
A lovely Russian lady spoke up: "Victor 
Hugo is fine, but no poet is so well known as 
the American Longfellow. I want to go to 
Boston to see the Bridge about which he 
wrote." Then she repeated every word of 
''I stood on the Bridge at Midnight." Upon 
that, an English captain just back from the 
Zulu war, recited a Longfellow poem. A 
gray-haired Scotchman said another, an 
American remembered one, a Greek sang 
some verses of Longfellow's that had been 
set to music, and when the French captain 
of the steamer declaimed "Excelsior", there 
was great handclapping, and it showed that 
Henry Longfellow was indeed a favorite poet. 



202 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

Henry Longfellow liked Cambridge. He 
boarded in a fine old place, Craigie House, 
where General George Washington had once 
stayed. And when he was married to a Bos- 
ton girl, her father gave them Craigie House 
for a wedding present. Longfellow was so 
happy as the years went on, that he wrote 
better than ever. You will like his ''Hia- 
watha", which tells about the Indians, his 
"Evangeline", and the story of Myles Stan- 
dish. Do not forget to read "The Children's 
Hour." Longfellow was never too busy to 
play with his children and saw to it that they 
were kept happy. Once when he took the 
three girls to England, Charles Dickens, the 
great English writer, asked them to visit at 
his grand place. Gads Hill. He sent a won- 
derful coach, all glittering with gold trim- 
mings and driven by men in scarlet livery, 
to the station for them, and had a Swiss 
chalet in his garden for them to use as a play- 
house. Many great people gave them dinners 
and parties. But what pleased them most 
of all was the respect shown their father. 
One of the daughters still lives in Craigie 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 203 

House, which is often visited by people who 
love Longfellow's poems and who wish to see 
the rooms in which he lived. 

Longfellow could sell his verses as fast as 
he wrote them. A New York editor once 
paid Longfellow three thousand dollars for 
one short poem. And imagine how proud 
his wife and children must have been to over- 
hear people saying: "I wonder if Mr. Long- 
fellow has written anything lately. If he 
has, I must read it!" Imagine how happy 
it made his father that he had kept his word : 
''If you will let me have my way, I will 
promise to be famous in something." And 
surely all the Americans who were on that 
steamer and heard the Russian, the Greek, 
and other foreigners reciting Longfellow's 
poems must have been proud that a man from 
their own country had won the name of ''The 
Poet of Every Land." 



JAMES McNeill whistler 

It was about seventy-five years ago that 
the Emperor of Russia, Nicolas I., made up 
his mind that he wanted a railroad between 
Moscow and St. Petersburg. He meant to 
have it one of the best in the world. So he 
called an officer into his council chamber and 
said : '' Now take plenty of time to look about 
in the different countries, have all the men 
you want to help you, but find me, somewhere, 
an engineer that will lay out a perfect rail- 
road line." Men appointed by this colonel 
traveled some months. They visited many 
cities, wrote letters, and asked advice. Then 
the colonel went back to the emperor and 
said : ''The man you need to do this piece of 
work lives in the United States of America." 

"What's his name?" asked Nicolas. 

"He is Major George Washington Whistler. 
He is one of the founders of the city in which 
he lives, Lowell, Massachusetts. He is a 

204 



JAMES McNeill whistler 205 

distinguished army officer and a fine engi- 
neer." 

'^He is named for a great officer," answered 
Nicolas, remembering our General Washing- 
ton, and he dispatched a letter to the Lowell 
engineer. 

The major made haste to start for Russia, 
because the honor was great, and the payment 
would be generous. He left his boys and his 
wife behind, because he did not know just 
how comfortable he could make them in the 
far-off country, but he told the boys to be good 
and to mind their mother. 

These boys were named James McNeill, 
William, and Charles. Their mother was a 
fine woman, but sometimes they wished she 
would not be quite so strict. She used to 
say on Saturday afternoons: "Come, boys, 
empty your pockets and gather up your toys ; 
we will put the knives and marbles away and 
get ready for Sunday." All day Sunday 
they were not allowed to read any book but 
the Bible. But James liked the stories he 
found there, and when he was only nine could 
say almost half the Bible by heart. 



206 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

James was the oldest in the family. He 
was born in Lowell and was such a cunning 
baby that everybody wanted his picture. 
One of his uncles, who loved him dearly, 
used to say : "It's enough to make Sir Joshua 
Reynolds (this was a great English painter, 
who had died years before) come out of his 
grave to paint Jimmie asleep!" Jimmie 
had delicate features and long, silky, brown 
curls that hung about his face. In among 
these was one white lock that dropped 
straight down over his forhead. This looked 
like a tiny feather. More than all his play- 
things he liked a pencil and paper. From 
the time he could scribble at all he drew 
pictures of everybody and everything in 
sight. These pictures were very good, and 
when he was large enough to go to school the 
other children were apt to ask him to make 
animals and birds for them on the black- 
board. 

Major Whistler soon sent for his family 
to join him in Russia. It was a long, hard 
voyage there, and poor little Charlie died on 
the way. The two other boys were better 



JAMES McNeill whistler 207 

sailors and were as well as could be when 
they met their father. They did enjoy the 
strange sights in St. Petersburg ! They were 
not long in getting acquainted with the little 
Russian children or in learning the language. 
They went skating, dressed in handsome 
furs ; they learned the folk and fancy dances, 
joined in the winter sports, and voted Russia 
a fine country. Still their parents did not 
let them forget they were little Americans. 

The climate did not agree with James, and 
every time he caught cold he had touches of 
rheumatism, so that often he had to stay in 
the house and have his feet put in hot water. 
Instead of making a fuss about this, he used 
to call for pencil and paper and practise 
drawing feet until he could make very per- 
fect ones. Major Whistler sent him to the 
Art Academy in St. Petersburg, where he was 
praised by his teachers. That old, tiresome 
rheumatism kept bothering him, and by and 
by he had a long rheumatic fever. He was 
a dear, patient boy, however, and afterwards 
declared he was almost glad he had it because 
some one who pitied the small invalid sent 



208 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

him a book of Hogarth's engravings. I want 
you to be sure and remember about this 
gentleness and patience, because when he was 
older people often accused him of being cross 
and rude. But at this time I am sure no one 
could have been nicer. 

James was very careful of his mother, too. 
One evening she had taken the boys in a 
carriage to see a big illumination. Bands 
were playing and rockets flying. The horses 
next their carriage were frightened, and 
reared and plunged as if they would hit the 
Whistler party. James shoved his mother 
down on the seat behind him, and standing 
in front of her, beat the horses back from them. 
He always was as polite to her as if she were 
the emperor's wife. 

The major worked too hard on the great 
railway and died before James was fifteen. 
The emperor was fond of the two boys and 
wanted them to stay on in Russia and be 
trained in the school for pages of the Court. 
But their mother said they must grow up in 
America and hurried back to her own land. 
She did not have much money to spend but 



JAMES McNeill whistler 209 

thought James should go to West Point to 
get the miHtary training his father had had. 
At this academy he found he did not like to 
draw maps and forts nearly as well as he did 
human figures and faces. Once, when he 
had been sent to Washington to draw maps 
for the Coast Survey, he forgot what he was 
about and filled up the nice, white margins 
with pert little dancing folks. He was well 
scolded for this, I can tell you. 

James was a tall, handsome young fellow 
at this time, and liked to go about to dancing- 
parties in the evening. He earned very little 
making maps and could not afford to buy 
the real, narrow-tailed coat which was proper. 
So he used to take his frock coat that he wore 
all day and pin it back to look like a dress 
coat and start off for big balls, where nobody 
was much shocked, because he was always 
doing droll things and was so lively that he 
was welcome in any dress. 

In Paris strangers used to ask who the young 
artist was who had the snow-white lock among 
his black curls, for the brown curls had grown 
as black as jet, and the map-drawing had grown 



210 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

SO tiresome that James had given up West 
Point and settled down to painting and etching 
in Paris. He had decided that there was 
nothing in the world which suited him but the 
life of an artist. He worked quite steadily 
and people began to say: ''I think young 
Whistler is going to do great things some day." 
But suddenly he packed up and went to 
London. 

In this city he was praised even more, but 
he did not sell enough pictures to pay his 
bills, and once, when he had kept men waiting 
a long time for money that he owed them, 
officers came and took everything away but 
his pictures. The room looked so bare and 
homely that Whistler painted a very good imi- 
tation of furniture round the walls of his 
room. So good, in fact, that a rich man who 
came to look at the pictures sat down in one 
of the imitation chairs and found himself on 
the floor. 

It was fortunate that James could go a long 
time without food, for it took nearly all he 
could earn from his pictures to buy paint 
and canvas for others. I dare say that quite 



JAMES McNeill whistler 211 

often when it was said: "James McNeill 
Whistler is growing rude and cross," the real 
truth of the matter was that James McNeill 
Whistler was hungry and worried. 

However, he began to make money at last, 
and just as life seemed bright, an art critic, 
Mr. John Ruskin, declared that the Whistler 
pictures, which were being bought at big prices, 
were poor — very poor ! Mr. Ruskin spoke, 
and what was worse, printed his opinion. "I 
never expected," he wrote, "to hear a coxcomb 
ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of 
paint in the public's face!" Well, it did 
not look for a while as if there was any more 
good luck in the world for James Whistler. 
He did not lose any time in getting a lawyer to 
sue Mr. Ruskin for spoiling the sale of his 
pictures. There was a trial in London, and 
the court-room was crowded. Some were 
there because they already owned Whistler 
pictures and wanted to find out if they had 
paid good money for bad pictures; others 
because they were warm friends of the 
artist or the critic ; but even more men 
and women went to hear the sharp questions 



212 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

of the lawyers and the clever answers 
of Ruskin:;and Whistler. Whistler won the 
case. When the judge awarded one farthing 
for damages (this is only a quarter of a 
cent in our money!), Whistler laughed and 
hung the English farthing on his watch- 
chain for a charm. Mr. Ruskin had to pay 
the costs of the trial, which had mounted up 
to nineteen hundred dollars. Some of his 
friends insisted on raising that sum for him. 
One of them said it was worth nineteen 
hundred dollars to have heard the talk that 
went on in the court-room. 

Later, Mr. Whistler received much more 
than two hundred guineas for a single picture. 
Two famous ones, of which we often see prints, 
are ''Portrait of my Mother" and the Scotch 
writer, ''Carlyle." James Whistler's mother 
lived to be an old woman, as one can guess 
from the picture, and her son loved her just 
as dearly as he did when he beat the prancing 
horses away from her, in Russia. The French 
nation bought this portrait, and it hangs 
in the Luxembourg Museum, Paris. The 
Scotch people wanted to own the portrait 



JAMES McNeill whistler 213 

of Carlyle, and the city of Glasgow was glad 
to pay five thousand dollars for it. 

Mr. Whistler married a woman who was 
herself an artist, and she was very proud of 
him. "The Duet", one of his pictures, shows 
his wife and her sister at the piano. Two 
portraits by this American artist hang in the 
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, but most of 
them are owned in England. 

James Whistler was always kind to young 
artists and liked to have them sit by him while 
he worked. They were very proud to be 
noticed by him, for long before he died he 
had received all kinds of honors and medals 
from foreign academies; and France, Ger- 
many, and Italy made him an Officer of the 
Legion of Honor, a Commander, and a 
Chevalier. He loved art so well that he 
made water-colors, pastels, etchings, and litho- 
graphs, as well as oil paintings. He did not 
get his fame without much hard work. You 
remember how many times he copied his own 
foot when he was a child. Well, he was 
just as patient and thorough when he was 
older. For a long time he made a practice 



214 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

of drawing a picture of himself every night 
before he went to bed. He traveled a great 
deal, painting views in many countries and 
studying the pictures of other artists. But 
Hogarth was his favorite, and it is interesting 
to know that James McNeill Whistler lies 
buried very near Hogarth, in London, for he 
had thought him a model ever since his boy- 
hood days in St. Petersburg. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

You can't think how hard fathers and 
mothers used to work and plan to get their 
children educated in the old days when there 
were no public schools. The Emersons did 
some planning, I can assure you. 

All the pictures of Ralph Waldo Emerson 
that I have happened to see show him as a 
man of middle age, with very smooth hair, 
and plain but very nice-looking clothes. He 
looks in these pictures as nurse Richards 
used to say of my father, — "as if he had 
just come out of the top bureau drawer." 

Well, Ralph Emerson did not always wear 
fine clothes, but I would not be a bit sur- 
prised if he always looked middle-aged. Boys 
who had as little fun as the Emerson boys 
had when they were growing up would not 
be expected to look young. 

In the end, Ralph became a minister, as 
well as a writer, and a lecturer, and a philos- 

215 



216 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

opher. His father and his grandfather had 
been ministers, too. I fancy it was trying 
to send all these minister-Emersons to school 
and college that kept each set of parents so 
poor. 

Ralph's father, William Emerson, did not 
care to be a minister. He wanted to live in a 
city and teach school, play his bass viol, 
and belong to musical or singing clubs. But 
his mother looked ready to cry when he told 
her this and said: ''Why, William, it has 
taken all the money I had to send you through 
Harvard College. What good will it do you, 
if you do not become a preacher?" So, 
rather than grieve his mother, he agreed to 
fit himself for preaching. How he hoped 
he might be sent to some large town ! But 
instead of that, he settled in a small place 
where neighbors lived two or three miles 
from each other. He was as lonesome as he 
could be. He was too poor to buy a horse 
and too busy to spend half his time walking, 
so he could not get very well acquainted 
with the families that came to hear him preach. 
Besides, his pay was small, and if the kind- 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 217 

hearted farmers had not brought him a ham, 
a leg of lamb, or a load of wood now and then, 
I don't see how he would have managed. 

In spite of all these hindrances, William 
saved a little money in five years. He bought 
a small farm and got married. As the years 
went by and there were children to feed, his 
preaching did not bring half the money they 
needed, so he taught school, his wife took 
boarders, and he — even — sold — his — be- 
loved bass viol. And I do not think they 
felt that anything was too hard if only these 
children could go to college. Mrs. Emerson 
was very proud of her husband when he stood 
in the pulpit on Sundays, and used to shut her 
eyes and try to imagine how their boys 
would look in a pulpit. 

Finally good luck came their way. Mr. 
Emerson was asked to preach in Boston . Then 
he had the city life he loved, he heard good 
music, and could call on his friends three 
times a day if he wished, and the boys had 
fine schools. 

None of the children were over ten when 
this good man, Minister William, died. And 



218 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

then came the widow's struggle to educate 
them. The church members were kind to 
her; she took boarders again, and sewed 
and mended with never a complaint, so long 
as the boys could go to the Latin School. 
They saw how tired she got and kept wishing 
they could grow up faster, so they could earn 
money and let her rest. They helped her 
wash dishes, and they chopped wood and 
cleaned vegetables, while the other school- 
boys played ball, or swam, or skated. There 
were no play hours for them. They had but 
one overcoat between them. So they took 
turns wearing it. Some of the mean, cruel 
boys at school used to taunt them about it, 
singing out, when they came in sight : ''Well, 
who is wearing the coat to-day?" 

A spinster aunt. Miss Mary Emerson, 
came to see the family often. She urged 
the boys to stand high in their classes and 
thought it would not hurt them to do without 
play. She read all the fine books aloud to 
them that she could borrow. Once a caller 
found her telling the boys stories of great 
heroes, late at night, so that they might forget 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 219 

that they had been without food for a day 
and a half ! They were as poor as that ! 

Ralph began to go to school when he was 
three and so was able to enter Harvard College 
when he wa^ fourteen. He did not have to 
pay for his room at the president's house 
because he did errands for him. And to pay 
for his meals, he waited on tables. That was 
working to get an education, wasn't it? 

Ralph did not find fault because he had to 
work all the time that he was not studying ; 
he was thinking of his mother. When he 
won a prize of thirty dollars for declaiming 
well, he sent it to his mother as fast as the 
mails could take it and asked her to buy a 
shawl for herself. But she had to take it 
to buy food for the smaller children ! Ralph 
used to tell his brothers that he could not 
think of anything in this world that would 
make him so happy as to be able some day 
to buy a house for his dear mother and to see 
her living easily. 

The other boys, — Waldo, Charles, Buckley, 
and Edward, — proved to be fine scholars, 
like Ralph, but they were never strong. 



220 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

They were always having to hurry south, or 
across the ocean to get over some illness. 
The truth is they did not have enough to 
eat when they were little. Old maid aunts 
can tell stories of heroes every night in the 
year, but that will never take the place of 
bread and potatoes, eggs and milk. 

Ralph's mother was very happy that he 
became a minister, and like his father, 
preached in Boston. After some years of 
preaching, he traveled in Europe. Then he 
lectured. He had a beautiful, clear voice, 
and all the things he told were so interesting 
that his name became famous, even before 
he wrote books. He settled in Concord, 
where Thoreau and Louisa May Alcott lived. 
He knew so much that by and by people 
called him "The Sage of Concord." He said 
he could never think very well sitting down. 
So when he wanted to write a poem, or sermon, 
or essay, (and you can hardly step into a New 
England home where there is not a book 
called Emerson's Essays) he put on his hat 
and went out for a walk. When he had 
walked three or four hours, he had usually 




He generally went out alone. Page 221. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 221 

decided just what he wanted to write down. 
On this account he generally went out alone. 
It was after a stroll in the woods near Concord, 
where the squirrels are thick, that hei wrote 
the fable about the mountain and the squirrel. 
It begins this way : 

" The, Mountain and the Squirrel 
Had a quarrel. 
The Mountain called the Squirrel 'Little Prig' — " 

It is rather nice to remember that after 
William Emerson had sold his bass viol, 
after all the pinching and saving of Mrs. 
William, and after going with half a coat, 
Ralph Waldo Emerson proved, in the end, 
to be such an uncommon man and scholar 
that his name is known the world over. 
Perhaps if all of us were as willing to study 
and work, and to keep studying and working, 
as the Sage of Concord was, there would be 
ever so many more famous Americans than 
there are to-day. 



JANE ADDAMS 

When Jane Addams was a little girl about 
seven years old, out in Cedarville, Illinois, her 
father used to wonder why she got up in 
the morning so much earlier than the other 
children. She explained to him politely 
that it was because she had so much to do. 
Her mother was dead, but her father looked 
after the children very carefully, and to make 
sure that Jane read something besides fairy 
stories, gave her five cents every time she 
could tell him about a new hero from Plutarch's 
Lives and fifteen cents for every volume of 
Irving's Life of Washington. She would have 
read what he asked her to without a cent of 
pay, for she almost worshiped him. He was 
tall and handsome and a man of great impor- 
tance in the west. Jane was very proud of 
him, and as she was plain, toed in when she 
walked, and had rather a crooked back, she 
imagined that he must really be ashamed of 

222 



JANE ADDAMS 223 

her, only he was too kind to say so. So she 
tried to keep out of his way. 

The Honorable John Addams (her father) 
taught a Bible class in Sunday-school, and 
Jane was so afraid it would mortify him if 
she walked home with him that she always 
ran ahead with an uncle, urging him to hurry. 
"My," she used to say, '^he would be too 
ashamed to hold his head up again, if I should 
speak to him on the street." No one knew 
she felt this way, and she had been dodging 
him some years when one morning, over in 
the neighboring town, she saw him coming 
down the steps of a bank building across the 
street from her. There was no place to hide, 
so she stood there blushing and breathing 
pretty hard. But he lifted his tall silk hat to 
her, smiled, and waved his hand. He looked 
so pleased to see her that she never worried 
any more about meeting him on the street. 

Across the road from Jane's house was a 
nice green common, and beyond this a narrow 
path led to her father's mills. He owned two, 
a flour-mill and a sawmill. In the sawmill 
great trees from the Illinois forests were 



224 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

sawed into lumber. Jane used to sit on a 
log that was every minute being drawn nearer 
the great teeth of the saw and jump off it 
when she was within a few inches of the saw. 

Jane and the other children had great fun 
in the flour-mill, too. They made believe 
the bins were houses, and down in the base- 
ment played on the tall piles of bran and 
shorts as they would on sand piles. 

Jane's home was pretty and all the stores 
where she bought candy and toys were 
fascinating places. She fancied the whole 
world was pleasant and gay. She supposed 
that everybody in Cedarville had as good a 
home as she, until one day she went down in 
the part of the town where the mill hands 
lived. There the houses were shabby and 
untidy, the children ragged and dirty. They 
looked hungry, too. Jane ran home, and 
when her father came to dinner she asked him 
why any one had to live in such a pitiful way. 
He could not explain it so that she felt any 
better about it. "When I grow up," she 
declared, "I will build a lovely house right 
in the middle of those poor huts, so that the 



JANE ADDAMS 225 

children may have something beautiful to 
look at ; and I will see that they have clean 
clothes and good food." 

Only a few Sundays later Jane dashed into 
her father's room ready for church. " See my 
new cloak," she called, ''isn't it handsome?" 

Her father admired it and then answered : 
"Yes, it is so much nicer than any other girl 
has that it may make some of the poorer ones 
unhappy. Perhaps you had better wear your 
old one." 

Jane was a child that could not bear to hurt 
another's feelings, so she hung the new coat 
away and wore the other. But as she walked 
to church, she asked her father why every 
child could not have the same kind of things. 
He told her probably there would always be 
a difference in the clothing families wore, but 
in religion and education there was no reason 
why all should not have equal chances. 
^'And, Jane dear," he added, ''I think it is 
a mistake ever to make other people unhappy 
by dressing too much." 

Jane never dropped her plan to have a fine 
house in the midst of poor ones. The back 



226 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

gave her a good deal of trouble as she grew 
older, and sometimes she had to lie still in 
bed for a year at a time. But she managed to 
fit for college and to graduate. Then she 
traveled abroad. But never for a day had 
she given up that house she had planned 
when she was a child of seven. 

Jane started to study medicine but was not 
strong enough to become a doctor. So she 
traveled some more, but she could never find 
a city where poor people were not suffering. 
It saddened her, and she said : ''I can't wait 
any longer. I must have a few people made 
happy." So with a girl friend she went to 
the big city of Chicago and hired a fine old 
house that had been built by a millionaire, 
a Mr. Hull. This house had a wide hall, 
open fireplaces, a lot of windows for the sun 
to stream through, and was on Halstead 
Street. This street is thirty-two miles long, 
and in it live people from about every country 
in the world. 

Jane Addams made the house so cheerful 
and pretty that it was a joy to peep into it. 
Miss Addams and her friend asked the people 



JANE ADDAMS 227 

about there to come in and have coffee and 
cocoa, read books aloud to them, taught the 
poor children to sew and cook, visited the sick, 
and made them understand — all these poor, 
tired, discouraged people — that at Hull 
House there were friends who wanted to help 
them in every way. 

By and by there were clubs for boys at 
Hull House, kindergartens for children, parties 
for old folks, and Halstead Street began to 
look cleaner, for Miss Addams went up and 
down those thirty-two miles of street and 
made it understood that she was there to help 
people grow healthy and clean. All the time, 
she was helping to nurse the sick and urging 
the rich people at their end of the city to come 
down to Halstead Street to see how the poor 
lived. At Hull House an idiot child or a 
drunken woman was helped as quickly and 
willingly as if they had been a clean member 
of the royal family. 

The more Miss Addams found out about 
what goes on in big cities, the harder she 
worked. She remembered what her father 
said about every one in this world deserving 



228 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

an equal chance, and she tried to help factory 
workers, mill hands, girls and boys who had 
done wrong, ignorant mothers who did not 
know how to keep house and take care of 
their children, men who were out of work, 
and the blind and crippled. 

Miss Addams's work set other people to 
thinking, and to-day there is hardly a large 
city but has built a handsome house down in 
the slums which offers help and comfort to 
the poor. But Hull House is the leading 
settlement house in the United States. 

Jane Addams still dresses simply. She 
does not care to have the best clothes in the 
neighborhood, or jewels, or luxuries for her- 
self. She does not believe in talking a great 
deal about what she intends to do later on. 
She has found that the world needs busy 
workers more than ready talkers. She is a 
busy, good woman who has done noble work in 
America. She is still getting up very early 
in the morning, and I fancy that when she is 
asked why she r6sts so little, she gives the same 
polite answer that her father heard: "Be- 
cause I have so much to do !" 



LUTHER BURBANK 

A FEW years ago every one who went to 
California tried to see Luther Burbank, for 
the newspapers and magazines were filled 
with stories of the wonderful things he was 
doing. Plenty of men make houses, auto- 
mobiles, ships to go on the water, and ships 
that sail through the air, clothing, and toys, 
but this man makes new fruits and flowers. 
It is not an easy thing to do, and Mr, Burbank 
has found that he needs all his strength and 
time for his work. So now, at his small farm 
at Santa Rosa and at his big farm at Sebasto- 
pol, strangers find a sign like this : 



ALL VISITORS ARE LIMITED 

TO FIVE MINUTES EACH UNLESS 

BY SPECIAL APPOINTMENT 



And during the six busiest months of the year, 
from April to October, other signs tell that it 

229 



230 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

will cost ten dollars to stay one hour. These 
signs are not put up because Mr. Burbank is 
cross or rude, but because these strange new 
plants have to be watched as carefully as 
tiny babies. He can't leave them for visitors. 

Luther Burbank was born in Lancaster, 
Massachusetts. When he was a baby in his 
cradle, his mother and sisters found that 
nothing made him dimple and crow with 
delight like a flower. They noticed, too, that 
he never crushed a flower, and once, when a 
petal fell off a flower he was holding, he tried 
for hours with his tiny fingers to put it back 
in place. And when he was big enough to run 
about the house and yard, instead of carrying 
a toy or a dog or cat in his arms, he was usually 
hugging a potted plant of some kind, for as 
people saw his great love for such things, they 
were on the lookout for cunning plants for 
the dear little Burbank boy. 

One day Luther was trudging across the 
yard, clasping a small lobster-cactus in an 
earthen pot, when he stumbled and fell, 
breaking the pot and plant. He cried for 
days over the accident. 



LUTHER BURBANK 231 

At school, Luther was a dehght to his 
teachers. There were few black marks against 
his name. He liked all his lessons, but the 
books that told him about birds, trees, and 
flowers pleased him most. 

When Luther was old enough to go to 
Leicester Academy, he had for his dearest 
chum a boy cousin who knew Agassiz, and 
who through him became interested in science. 
This boy wanted to study about rocks and 
caves, rivers and fish, while Luther watched 
the birds that perched on the rocks and the 
trees that grew near the rivers. But the two 
spent many weeks tramping over the country 
together. 

Luther worked several summers in a factory 
near his home. He was quick to understand 
machinery and invented a machine that 
saved the manager of the factory a great deal 
of money, for it would do the work of six men. 
Luther's family and friends were sure he would 
be an inventor. But he himself wanted to 
raise flowers. 

Luther saved a little money and started 
a vegetable garden. He tried experiments 



232 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

with the potato plants until he raised an 
entirely different kind than had ever grown 
before. Of course this made him want to 
experiment with other plants, and he stayed 
in the hot sun so much looking after them that 
he had a bad sunstroke. This led to his going 
to a climate where he might live outdoors 
during more months of the year, and where 
he would not be apt to have such attacks. 

When Luther reached California, he had 
only a few dollars, rather poor health, and 
was among strangers. He tried to get work 
on farms or orchards, because he wanted to 
experiment with vines and vegetables. But 
if he got work, it was usually for only a few 
days at a time. Finally he was obliged to 
work on a chicken ranch, where the only 
place for him to sleep was in one of the chicken 
coops. The pay was smaU, and he did not 
have as much or as good food as some pet 
dogs get. But all the time he was saying to 
himself: ''If I can have patience, I shaU yet 
get a farm of my own." 

By and by he was hired to look after a small 
nursery (this is what a big plantation of trees 



LUTHER BURBANK 233 

is called). He would have been perfectly 
happy there if sleeping in a damp room had 
not given him a fever. He was poor, sick, 
and almost alone, but not quite, for a very 
poor woman, who had only the milk of one 
cow to sell, found him one day lying on a bed 
of straw, and ever after that insisted on his 
drinking a pint of her milk each day. He 
declared that this milk saved his life. 

For some years Luther took one odd job 
after another until he saved enough to buy a 
small piece of ground. Then he was soon 
raising plants and making new varieties. He 
read and studied and tried experiments. 
Sometimes he failed, and even when he suc- 
ceeded there was a good deal of fun made of 
him. Some people thought Luther Burbank 
was crazy. It seemed such an odd thing for 
a man to think of doing — making a fruit or a 
flower that had not been heard of or dreamed 
of before ! But he did not pay any heed to 
all this sneering. He worked harder than 
ever. And before long, the first new plants 
were in great demand, so that by selling them 
he got money to buy more land. To-day 



234 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

some of the largest orchards in CaHfornia 
are growing from one of Luther Burbank's 
experiments. And our country is millions of 
dollars richer from his new kinds of plums, 
potatoes, and prunes. 

Mr. Burbank bought acres of land, hired 
armies of workmen, denied himself pleasures 
and visitors, and did not mind how tired he 
was, so long as old plants were being made 
better, or new plants were being created . Pretty 
soon letters began to come from Russia, France, 
Japan, England, South America, and Africa, 
asking for some Burbank plants and some 
Burbank advice as to their care. 

Mr. Burbank has made more new forms 
of plant life than any other man. He has 
worked on two thousand, five hundred species 
of plants. Besides making flowers more beau- 
tiful and of sweeter fragrance, he has done 
wonders with the cactus plants that grow on 
prairies. Once all these plants were covered 
with thorns and prickles, so that the cattle 
who bit into them rushed away with bleeding 
mouths, feeling much the same as we should 
if we put our teeth into a stalk of celery and 



LUTHER BURBANK 235 

bit on to fish-hooks and needles. Well, Mr. 
Burbank has changed all that. The fruit of 
some of his cactus plants is almost as sweet 
as oranges; the thorns are all gone so that 
the stalks are fine food for cattle ; some of the 
leaves make good pickles or greens ; and the 
small plants are used for hedges. So the 
plants that were in old times a pest and nui- 
sance are to-day, thanks to Mr. Burbank, a 
comfort to the world. 

Luther Burbank is a handsome, courteous 
gentleman, fond of fun, of young people 
and children, but you can see how busy he 
has been in the odd science of making new 
plants and trees, and as he has plans for a 
great many more, you will also understand 
why he really has to have those signs put up 
around his farm at Santa Rosa. 



EDWARD ALEXANDER MACDOWELL 

On a lovely Sunday morning, some years 
ago, when all the sweet June smells came in 
through the open church window, an old man 
with silvery white hair played such a soft, en- 
trancing little air on the organ, as the ushers 
took the weekly offering, that the listeners 
held their breath. ''What is it?" they 
whispered. ''What is the dainty thing 
called?" They asked the organist at the 
close of the service, and he answered : "That 
was MacDowell's 'To a Wild Rose' — and 
MacDowell is a composer of whom America 
may well be proud." 

Edward MacDowell was born in New York. 
He had his first piano lessons when he was 
eight years old. But as soon as he had 
learned the notes, his mother noticed that it 
was not exercises that he played, but merry, 
rollicking airs. When she asked him where 
he found them, he replied : "In my head and 

236 



EDWARD ALEXANDER MACDOWELL 237 

heart." He was even then composing music 
of his own. His mother did not run to the 
neighbors at once, crying " My son is a genius." 
Instead of that she thought: ''Dear me, I 
am afraid Edward will be a Jack-of-all-trades 
and good at none, for he writes beautiful 
stories and poems and draws exact likenesses 
of people. What in the world shall we do 
with him?" 

All his music teachers said it would be 
wicked not to keep him at the piano. But 
that was easier said than done. When, at 
the age of fifteen, he went with his mother to 
Paris, he passed fine examinations for entrance 
to the French Conservatory and learned the 
French language in no time, so as to under- 
stand the teachers and lecturers. But he was 
still apt to forget that he went to his classes 
to listen and spent much time sketching the 
faces of teacher or pupils on the margin of his 
note-book. MacDowell was busy one day, 
over a picture of a teacher who had a large, 
queerly shaped nose, when the teacher, seeing 
that the boy was paying no attention to the 
lesson, darted to his seat and seized the sketch. 



238 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

MacDowell was frightened and imagined he 
would be punished. But the teacher was not 
a bit angry when he saw how true the Hues 
were. He asked to keep the paper and a 
few days later called on Mrs. MacDowell. 
"Madam," he said, ''I have shown the 
picture your son drew of me to an artist of 
the School of Fine Arts, and this gentleman 
is so sure Edward is meant for a portrait 
painter that he offers to pay all his expenses 
for three years and to give him lessons free 
of charge." This was a grand chance for a 
poor boy. Mrs. MacDowell did not want to 
make any mistake. She looked at the teacher 
a minute and asked : ''What would you do? " 

"Why, I am sure he will make a famous 
piano player." 

There was the same old tiresome question : 
if Edward could do three or four things well, 
how was any one to know which he might do 
best? 

Finally the matter was left to Edward. 
After a good many days of thinking, he de- 
cided his life should be given to music. Art 
was given up, and Edward promised to waste 



EDWARD ALEXANDER MACDOWELL 239 

no more time on his drawing. But he was a 
great reader and liked good books to the end 
of his days. 

After study of the piano in Paris, Mac- 
Dowell went to Frankfort for two years. He 
had many pupils there, and to one of them he 
was married. 

The young married couple crossed the ocean 
and stayed in Boston long enough for Mac- 
Dowell to give some concerts. His fingers 
were like velvet on the keys of the piano, 
and every one declared he must take part in a 
grand American concert that was to be given 
during the Paris Exposition. He did as he 
was asked, and the French people waved their 
handkerchiefs and cried in their language: 
" Good for the little American ! " The French 
people invited him everjrwhere and begged 
him to remain in Paris, but from first to last 
Edward MacDowell was a loyal American, 
and he returned to Boston, where for eight 
years he played in concerts, took pupils, and 
best of all wrote much of the music which 
makes Americans so proud of him. He 
became a professor of music in Columbia 



240 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

College, and his piano pieces were played 
the world over. 

Many men who write music try to give it 
a style like some old Italian or German 
composer, but MacDowell's music does not 
remind one of any German, Italian, or French 
writers ; it is just itself — it is MacDowell. 
Some of his music is heavy and grand, but 
more of it is delicate. It was wonderful 
to hear MacDowell himself play "To a Wild 
Rose." A friend who knew how much the 
composer liked that said once: "Mac, some- 
thing dreadful happened a few weeks ago. 
I heard your 'Wild Rose' played at a high 
school graduation, on a high school piano, by 
a high school girl — awful !" 

MacDowell laughed and answered: "I 
suppose she pulled it up by the roots, didn't 
she?" 

MacDowell loved outdoor life, and after 
he bought a farm at Peterboro, New Hamp- 
shire, he built a log cabin way off in the woods, 
had a grand piano carried there, and in the 
quiet of that forest wrote some of his sweetest 
musical sketches. 



EDWARD ALEXANDER MACDOWELL 241 

The - names of MacDowell's compositions 
show he loved life under the sky. There are 
''The Woodland Sketches", ''Sea Pieces", 
"From a Log Cabin", and single titles like 
"The Eagle", "A Water Lily", and "The 
Bars at Sunset." 

MacDowell worked too steadily and died 
when he was quite young, but he had written 
enough music to be remembered as a great 
American composer. He said any man who 
wanted to write music that described his 
country must love that country so well that 
he would put into his notes what the nation 
had put into its life. He felt that America 
was a happy, brave, hopeful nation, and he 
tried to make his music show that. 

MacDowell was shy and modest and was 
quite surprised when different colleges made 
him a Doctor of Music, when great concert 
players meekly asked him if they played his 
sonatas as he wished them played, and when 
medals and jewels were sent him as gifts. 

A good many studios are now built near 
MacDowell's log cabin in Peterboro, and 
musicians and authors stay in the forest 



242 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

through the summer months, liking the quiet 
spot and hoping the sight of his log cabin 
may make them work as faithfully for the 
glory of America as Edward MacDowell did. 
Even the French artist who wished to make 
a portrait painter of him must have been glad 
that MacDowell clung to music, and Mrs. 
MacDoweU found that her Jack-of-all-trades 
was really master of one. 



THOMAS ALVA EDISON 

If ever there was a busy boy, Thomas 
Edison, who was born in Milan, Ohio, was one. 
He wanted to do everything that he saw others 
doing, and more than that, he liked to contrive 
new ways of doing things. The grown-up 
people wished he would not ask so many 
questions or stay always at their elbows, 
watching their work. But it came out all 
right in the end, these busy ways of his, for 
to-day he is one of the world's greatest in- 
ventors. 

Thomas was a sunny, laughing, little boy, 
and pretty, too, except when he was trying 
to think how something was made; then he 
would scowl and pucker up his mouth until 
you would hardly know him. He always 
wanted to know how machinery worked and 
asked his father, or any one near by, to 
explain it to him. Sometimes his father would 
get all tired out answering questions, and to 

243 



244 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

get rid of the little chap would say : "I don't 
know." Then Thomas would stare at his 
father and say: ''You don't know! Why 
don't you know?" Then, if Mr. Edison 
did not answer, Thomas would perhaps run 
down by the water, along the tow-path for 
the canal. 

There were shipyards by the water, and he 
would pick up the different tools and ask the 
workmen what the name of each was, how it 
was used and why it was used, and get in 
their way generally until they drove him 
home. He built fine houses and tiny villages, 
with plank sidewalks, from the bits of wood 
these ship-builders gave him. The belts and 
wheels in the saw and grist mills pleased him. 
He watched them often. Once, in one of the 
mills, he fell into a pile of wheat in a grain 
elevator and had nearly smothered before he 
was found. Several times he fell into the 
canal and came near drowning. 

When Thomas was six years old, he watched 
a goose sitting on her eggs and saw them 
hatch. He wanted to understand this strange 
thing better, so he gathered all the goose 



THOMAS ALVA EDISON 245 

and hen's eggs he could and made a big nest 
in his father's barn. Then all of a sudden, 
he was missing. The family rushed to the 
canal, the village, and the mills, and finally 
found him sitting on the nest of eggs in the 
barn. He wanted to see if he could hatch 
those eggs out ! 

The only person who did not get out of 
patience with Thomas was his mother. He 
and she adored each other. She had been 
a school teacher and was used to children. 
She saw that Thomas had a keen mind and was 
always ready to explain things to him. When 
he went to school, the teacher did not know 
what to make of his strange remarks and 
almost broke Thomas's heart one day by 
telling the principal that she thought the little 
Edison boy was " addled." Thomas ran home 
crying. He could not bear to go again to the 
school, so his mother taught him at home. 
He had a wonderful memory and must have 
paid close attention to what was said, for he 
never had to be told a thing the second time. 
Thomas quite often had his lessons with his 
mother on the piazza. They seemed so happy 



246 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

that the children who went to school often 
wished they could study with Mrs. Edison. 
She was fond of children and was apt to run 
down to the gate with some cookies or apples 
for them. 

Sunny days Thomas liked to go with his 
father and mother into a tower Mr. Edison 
had built near the house. It was eighty 
feet high, and from its top one could see the 
broad river and hills beyond. 

At the age of nine, Thomas was more fond 
of reading than of playing. When he was 
twelve, he got the notion in his head that 
it would be a fine thing to read every book that 
was in the Public Library in Detroit. He kept 
at it for months ! But when he had read every 
book on the first fifteen feet of shelves, he 
saw that some were very dry and stupid 
and gave up his plan. After that he chose 
the books that told of interesting things. 

When Thomas was eleven, he felt he ought 
to be doing something besides reading. He 
wanted to earn some money. His mother 
did not agree with him, but after he had 
teased for whole weeks, she said: ''Well, 



THOMAS ALVA EDISON 247 

you may try working part of each day." 
He sold papers and candy on the trains 
running between Port Huron and Detroit. 
At first Mrs. Edison was very nervous. She 
imagined that perhaps his train was getting 
wrecked, that he had fallen under the wheels 
of the engine, and all sorts of horrid things, 
but as he kept coming back home every night, 
safe and happy, she stopped worrying. He 
was bright, and the men who talked and 
laughed with him paid him a good deal of 
money for the papers and the nuts and candies 
which he carried in a basket. He was a 
proud boy to hand over to his mother the 
earnings of a week, which sometimes counted 
up to twenty dollars. 

Thomas was such a very busy person that 
the lessons he had with his mother early in 
the mornings and his paper work on the train 
were not enough to satisfy him, so he bought 
some old type, a printing-press, and some ink 
rollers, and began making a little newspaper 
of his own. This newspaper was only the size 
of a lady's pocket-handkerchief, but it was so 
clever that he soon had five hundred sub- 



t 

248 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

scribers, and he made ten more dollars a 
week on that. The great English engineer, 
Stephenson, was traveling on Thomas's train 
one day and was so pleased with the paper 
that he bought a thousand copies. He said 
there were many newspapers edited by 
grown-up men that were not one half as good. 
Remember about this paper, and if ever you 
see Thomas Edison's beautiful home at 
Orange, New Jersey, ask to look at a copy of it. 
Mr. Edison thinks as much of it as of anything 
in the fine library. 

Well, Thomas's business on the trains grew 
so that he had to hire four boys to help him. 
Then he bought some chemicals, and in one 
corner of the baggage car, in spare moments, 
he began trying experiments. He was just 
getting hold of some pretty exciting ideas, 
when one day the train ran over something 
rough and spilled a bottle that held phos- 
phorus. This set the woodwork on fire, and 
while poor Thomas was trying to beat out 
the flames, the conductor, in a rage, threw 
boy, press, bottles, and all off the train. 
And that was the end of the newspaper. 



THOMAS ALVA EDISON 249 

The next thing to interest Thomas was the 
system of telegraphing. He had not lost the 
habit of asking questions and quizzed the 
operator at Mt. Clemens, Mr. McKenzie, 
every chance he had. As he stood on the 
station platform one day, asking Mr. 
McKenzie something, he noticed the operator's 
little child playing on the tracks right in 
front of a coming train. And that train was 
an express ! Thomas rushed out and seized 
the child just as the train almost touched 
his coat. Mr. McKenzie was so grateful 
that he said : ''Look here, I want to do some- 
thing for you. Let me teach you to be a tele- 
graph operator." Thomas was delighted and 
after that used to take four lessons a week. 
At the end of three months he was an expert. 

Thomas could not have learned so quickly 
if he had not worked very steadily. He al- 
ways put his heart and mind on whatever he 
was learning, and he did not sleep more than 
four or five hours at night all the time he was 
studying the dots and dashes that are used 
in sending telegraph messages. 

At the age of sixteen, Thomas Edison took 



250 CHILD'S BOOK OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 

his first position as telegraph operator. He 
did not earn very much at this work, at first, 
and usually tried to get places where he had 
night hours. This was so that he would have 
part of the daytime to read in public libraries 
and to try experiments. There were so many 
wonderful things to learn or to understand 
in this world that it was a pity, he thought, 
to waste much time in eating or sleeping. 

When Thomas was twenty-two, he had 
made his ideas worth three hundred doUars a 
month. Probably the school teacher who 
thought the little Edison boy was "addled" 
never earned that much at any age ! From 
that time until now Thomas Edison's experi- 
ments have meant a fortune to him and no 
end of pleasure and comfort to the world. 
You cannot go into a city in the United 
States that is not fitted with electric lights — 
Edison lights. When you hear a phonograph, 
remember it is an Edison invention; when 
you go sight-seeing in a new city, the guide of 
the motor carriages will shout the names of 
places to you through a megaphone, — another 
Edison idea. He has patents on fourteen 



THOMAS ALVA EDISON 251 

hundred ideas. No wonder he has had to 
keep busy! There is no telling how many 
more patents his brain will win, for he is only 
sixty-seven, and that is young in the Edison 
family. Thomas's great-grandfather lived to 
be a hundred and four, and his grandfather 
lived to be a hundred and two. And he him- 
seK is just as busy to-day as he was when he 
drove every one but his mother nearly crazy 
with his questions. Only to-day he stays 
in his workshop, getting answers to them. 

He never loses his interest in telegraph 
matters; many of his inventions have been 
along that line. In fun, he called his first 
girl and boy "Dot" and "Dash." And in 
that fine home in New Jersey, hanging near 
the funny little newspaper, is a picture of 
Thomas Edison when he sold newspapers on 
the train and sent telegraph news about 
the great Civil War to all the stations along 
the way. The picture shows a bright, merry 
face. America's greatest inventor still laughs 
like a boy and takes a day off now and then 
for music, fishing, and reading. But he is 
the busiest man living. 



W 56 



r% 











>'\ -HK-' **'"** ••^P-' /\ vW-' **'"-^ 






r^^ 




%. •'"• ^f° .. < 



^. •" a9 ^ *•■« «v 

^i^ <V^ • • • i. '^•^ 4 V^ 





4r ^ 










WERT 
BOOKBtNOINC 

Graniville. Pa 
M*> JUHE I' 



aV O 



